Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 18 December 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932
Rhetoric meets reality for 22 million people
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – January is going to be exciting and not in a good way for millions of Americans on the verge of losing their health insurance.
Four Republicans representing swing districts in Pennsylvania and New York joined with all Democrats to force House Speaker Johnson to hold an up or down vote on extending Obamacare tax credits for three years.
The GOP rebellion using the legislative maneuver of a discharge petition is rare in itself – and even rarer in the way Speaker Johnson chooses to receive it. Rather than simply comply and hold the vote within seven business days as required, he shuts the House down for the holidays and puts the vote off until January.
He is not operating in good faith because by then, insurance rates will have soared for 22 million people who rely on Obamacare, and they include a lot of Republicans who are about to awaken to an insurmountable rate hike.
The Republicans have set the stage for a time bomb that will start detonating as the horror stories come in and we learn of people losing health care insurance they cannot afford, and all the implications that flow from that. There will be hospitals turning away patients and tales of people with chronic illnesses unable to pay for medication.
It is not just that their insurance premiums are going to soar. They are going to be unaffordable.
President Trump, in his speech to the country, attempted to flip the situation, dubbing it the UN-affordable Care Act. But the truth is that costs would be higher without it, and costs would be lower if more Americans were on Obamacare and Trump were not undermining it at every turn. Shared risk only works when the young and healthy are included, and everyone pays their fair share.
Trump campaigned not once but twice on the promise that fixing health care would be easy, but he has never tried to pass major health care reform. He prizes rhetoric over reality, and his voters have trusted him to deliver – that is, until now. While he touts the best health care that is yet to come from his administration, Republicans on Capitol Hill voted to end the Obamacare subsidies that make insurance affordable for people who make too much money to be poor, but not enough money to afford the rising cost of health care insurance (and a lot of other necessities of life if we are being honest).
Mister President, look at the polls. You are at 36 percent approval. You cannot sit off to the side and let House Republicans take the hit. Enough of them have had it with your unrealistic rhetoric while their seats are endangered. And in the Senate, Republicans are not going to abide by your demand to junk the filibuster to get your way, not when their three-vote majority is vulnerable going into next year's midterms.
Next month, the time bomb goes off when those premium rate hikes reach the homes of millions of people who live paycheck to paycheck. One thing every Republican knows is that their party is likely to lose the House, and while the Senate is a tougher climb, the Democrats have a path to the majority that is paved with broken health care promises.
Republican Mike Lawler represents a suburban district just north of New York City, and he is one of the signatories to the discharge petition. He is furious that Speaker Johnson is stalling on the vote to extend the Obamacare subsidy, putting it off until after the rate hikes are in place. Lawler fumed after Johnson said he would only move forward with a GOP-authored health care plan that does not address the subsidies and has no hope of passing in the Senate.
The Senate did previously vote on the Obamacare subsidies, rejecting the legislation because it could not get 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. But with Lawler and a growing number of restless House Republicans fighting for the extension, there is the possibility that enough Senate Republicans could join all 47 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold if the pain in the country becomes too obvious to ignore.
But first, the House must vote.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
© 2025 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND