The three-week congressional sprint to the holidays has begun, and the question on everyone’s mind is: can anyone figure out how to avert disaster on soon-to-expire Obamacare subsidies?
Several competing proposals on that subject came out this week, one with New Jerseyans at the helm; two New Jersey members also headed home to testify on issues they care about, with varying degrees of success. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
Bohemian Subsidy
Congress has spent much of 2025 debating what to do about the expiration of Covid-era Affordable Care Act tax credits at the end of this year, credits without which an estimated four million Americans will go without health coverage. The debate, in fact, was a key reason for the longest government shutdown in U.S. history: Democrats insisted on an ACA fix as part of reopening the government, Republicans said no chance.
Republicans ultimately won that fight, but now both parties are faced with a January 1 deadline and no consensus about what to do. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and a big bipartisan group of House members proposed one solution yesterday: a one-year ACA credit extension with some income caps, plus a framework for other health care policy fixes to be implemented in 2026.
“In just a few days, for millions and millions of Americans, health insurance premiums are going to spike significantly,” Gottheimer told reporters after a press conference on the proposal today. “We have a couple weeks to get something done. That’s it. And we plan to get something done.”
“We need to ensure that American men, women, and children have uninterrupted care… This is tricky business, but this is a good start,” concurred Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), one of the co-sponsors of the bill and among the most vocal members in the Republican conference on the ACA issue. Another New Jersey Republican, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), is also a co-sponsor.
But Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been resistant to any attempts to extend the credits, and an upcoming vote in the Senate on a Democrat-led three-year extension bill is likely to fall short. There will reportedly be a GOP leadership-led health care plan released sometime next week, but Senator Andy Kim said that discontent is growing among members of both parties about the lack of a clear path forward.
“The Republicans say they have ideas, but there’s nothing ready to go, nothing that can move that fast,” Kim said. “It makes no sense to me. We’re going to continue to push, but at this point, Republicans have let this go on for so long that there’s an inevitability now that so many families are going to be hurt.”
I saw photos of this and the table wasn’t round
As part of his own response to the looming ACA credit crisis, Senator Cory Booker held a roundtable in Newark earlier today on what should be done.
Booker said that the roundtable, hosted in conjunction with the progressive group New Jersey Citizen Action, focused on what the effects would be for New Jersey residents if the credits are allowed to expire; one estimate from the state Department of Banking and Insurance earlier this year put the number of New Jerseyans who would see their health care costs increase at 454,016.
“This morning, I heard from my neighbors in Newark about one of their deepest worries: the rising cost of their health care at a time when the price of everyday necessities continues to climb – from energy to groceries,” Booker said. “No family should have to choose between affording essential health care and making ends meet. Yet, this is exactly what Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are forcing hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans to do with their refusal to bolster ACA subsidies.”
He dealt with them Frankly
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch)’s war against a proposal to move key hospital services from Long Branch to a nearby suburb has paid dividends: after an eight-hour hearing, the State Health Planning Board voted yesterday to delay any decision until more information can be gathered.
Pallone has led the charge against the proposed move since October, when RWJBarnabas Health announced that it was applying to move a hospital license from Long Branch to Tinton Falls. The congressman argued that the move would be harmful to his district’s lower-income residents, and specifically blamed Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration for allowing it to proceed. (The Murphy administration took issue with that characterization and said it was simply following procedure after RWJBarnabas submitted its application.)
After testifying at yesterday’s hearing, Pallone took a victory lap on the decision to defer, and said he would continue pressing his case on the downsides of the proposal.
“Everyone deserves access to life-saving health care at a hospital,” Pallone said this morning. “This fight isn’t over and I’m glad the State Health Planning Board understands just how disastrous this would be. The decision by the board to defer is unprecedented and demonstrates the legitimate and serious concerns with RWJ Barnabas Health’s application.”
Beach haven
Senator Kim headed to the New Jersey Statehouse on Monday to testify against a bill that would weaken the state comptroller’s office – a relatively unusual occurrence from a U.S. senator, to be sure, but nothing wildly out of the ordinary. Typical practice in Trenton would have been for Kim, as a prominent sitting elected official, to be allowed to speak first, with the assembled activists and lobbyists testifying after him.
State Sen. James Beach (D-Oaklyn), the committee chairman, had other ideas. Beach forced Kim and his companions, Attorney General Matt Platkin and acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh, to wait until the very end of the five-hour hearing – forcing Kim to miss that evening’s Senate votes – and holding them to a strict three-minute time limit that he hadn’t bothered to enforce for prior witnesses.
“Why do you think you’re special?” Beach asked when Kim challenged him. “You’re not.”
The incident drew national headlines, and Kim argued it likely made it harder for the bill to pass, with legislators calling him to say that they were furious about the conduct at the hearing and planned to oppose the bill. Kim also connected his interactions with Beach to his longer-term fight against political machines in New Jersey, a fight that dates back to his first Senate campaign in 2024.
“I was trying to think through, why is the chairman so angry? Why is he being so antagonistic? There’s a version of this where they just let me testify early, let me say my piece, and move on. But the chairman couldn’t help himself,” Kim said. “And it’s because there’s so much anger, but also, frankly, fear on their side that the politics that they have done their whole lives is going away.”
First Choice’s First Amendment
New Jersey was back before the Supreme Court this week, this time in a case revolving around subpoenas that the state issued to First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a network of crisis pregnancy centers that steer women away from abortions. The case – argued before the court by Sundeep Iyer, Attorney General Matt Platkin’s chief counsel – revolved not around the hot-button topic of abortion but rather around whether First Choice was allowed to challenge the subpoenas on First Amendment grounds.
“The question before the Supreme Court focuses on whether First Choice sued prematurely, not whether our subpoena is valid,” Platkin said. “First Choice is looking for an exception to the usual procedural rules as it tries to avoid complying with a lawful subpoena, something the Constitution does not permit.”
According to several Supreme Court reporters, however, the court appeared “sympathetic” to First Choice’s arguments. Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), New Jersey’s most dogged abortion opponent, said that he hopes the nine justices rule against the state.
“In an unconscionable abuse of power, NJ Governor Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin have gone to great lengths to strip women of life-affirming support, simply because pregnancy centers refrain from promoting or participating in the killing of unborn children by abortion,” Smith said. “I urge the Supreme Court to uphold the pregnancy centers’ constitutionally protected freedoms against the bullying and discrimination of the state of New Jersey.”
Other Garden State plots
• Reps. Kean and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) have teamed up on a bipartisan bill, the Help Ensure Lower Patient Copays Act, that they say would make prescriptions more affordable.
“Copay assistance programs help make costly medications attainable for Americans who rely on them,” Kean said. “Yet under current law, insurers and PBMs can pocket this assistance without lowering patients’ cost-sharing obligations. Our bipartisan legislation will fix that problem by ensuring those savings are passed on to patients.”
• The filing deadline for the special election to replace Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill arrived this week, and it’ll be a crowded race: 12 Democrats and one Republican will appear on February 5 primary ballots to represent New Jersey’s 11th congressional district.
The Democratic number was originally 14, but one candidate, former Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello, submitted well below the required number of signatures, while another, former congressional staffer Marc Chaaban, exited the race a few days after filing. (Chaaban later endorsed one of his former opponents, Analilia Mejia.)