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Nine House Republicans On Wednesday night, they resisted their party leaders to advance a vote on a Democratic-led health care bill.
The support of the nine Republican lawmakers was key to advancing the vote to extend Obamacare’s enhanced subsidies, which expired at the end of last year. A vote on the bill itself is now expected Thursday afternoon.
It’s a hard blow for the President Mike JohnsonR-La., who argued for weeks that the majority of House Republicans were opposed to extending tax subsidies related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Mike Lawler were among the House Republicans who voted to pass a bill on the expired Obamacare subsidies, despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s objections to such a move. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
But a significant number of Republican Party moderates were frustrated that their party leaders in the House and Senate had done little to prevent rising insurance premium prices for millions of Americans.
Four of them registered on a application for discharge filed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., aimed last month to force a vote on extending the grants for three years over the objections of House Republican leaders.
A discharge petition is a mechanism for getting a bill considered in the House even if majority leaders oppose it.
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These four lawmakers — Reps. Mike Lawler, R-Pa., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., and Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa. — were among nine to vote to advance Jeffries’ petition Wednesday.
Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., arrives at the House Republican Conference caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
At the time, they criticized leaders in both parties for not working toward a bipartisan solution sooner and said they had little choice in the matter.
The five other lawmakers who voted in favor of the petition were Reps. Nick LaLota, R-Y., Maria Salazar, R-Fla., David Valadao, R-Calif., Max Miller, R-Ohio, and Tom Kean Jr., R-J.
The bill is expected to pass the House on Thursday, but it is almost certain to die before then. GOP-controlled Senate.
Similar legislation led by Senate Democrats failed to reach the necessary threshold of 60 votes to advance in December.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference on health care with other House Democrats, on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, Oct. 15, 2025. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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The vast majority of Republicans believe the subsidies are a COVID-era relic of a long-broken federal health care system. Conservatives argued that the relatively small percentage of Americans relying on Obamacare meant an extension would do little to alleviate the rising health care costs citizens across the country are experiencing.
But a core group of moderates argued that failure to extend a reformed version of those measures would force millions of Americans to face skyrocketing health care costs this year.
House Republicans passed a health care bill in mid-December, aimed to reduce these costs for more Americans, but this legislation did not pass the Senate.
