Terry Gerton Last week Congress was in recess, but that didn’t mean it was a quiet news week. The White House floated a plan to address the health care subsidy problem that was part of the shutdown agreement. What are you hearing there and how’s it playing?
Mitchell Miller Well, when this trial balloon floated, it completely caught a lot of House Republicans, particularly, off guard. They were totally surprised by this and the fact that it was going to be a two-year extension. Now it would have potentially included some of the reforms that GOP lawmakers are looking for. They want limits on income that are now brought down a little bit more. They want some reforms that they say will take care of waste. But this definitely was quite an event here on the Hill, given the fact that the lawmakers are spread out all across the country in their districts, but they quickly made it clear that they did not like this proposal. And so while there was talk about it being rolled out last week, the White House quickly put the brakes on it and said, okay … Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, is acknowledging there are some very intense discussions about what is going to happen with health care within the White House and within, among Republicans. But right now, everybody’s kind of scrambling. There are some bipartisan proposals that are coming out of the House. The Senate is trying to work with some things. What I think may happen in the coming weeks is, you’re going to have a vote in the Senate, maybe one or two, on these proposals. One of them is likely to just be a straight up extension of the ACA for a year to keep those insurance costs down. That will likely go down to defeat. And then Republicans, it’s still unclear exactly what they’re going to propose, but you can bet that there will be something brought to the floor by Senate Majority Leader John Thune. That I think will also be defeated because Democrats will filibuster it. And then I think what is really going to probably happen is, this is all gonna get pushed into January, and when people start seeing those eye popping insurance costs going up $100, $500, $1,000, $2,000 and more per month, that is going to put a lot of heat on lawmakers to try to come up with something.
]]>
Terry Gerton You make a good point that there aren’t that many working days in December before they get to having to deal with this in January. What else is on the congressional agenda for those few days?
Mitchell Miller Well, you know, that’s a big question because last week was just really a lost week. When the House came back after the shutdown, there was all this talk about they were gonna get right back to trying to get back to regular order and we were going to see a lot of action on appropriations bills. That really just did not happen. There were a few symbolic votes in the House, and so they’ve still got this set of nine appropriations bills that they have to deal with. And even though they keep talking a good game and saying that they’re going to address them, and there is some appropriations meetings going on back in behind the scenes, but that’s going to be the real big thing that they need to at least start getting some traction on, some type of a minibus, perhaps bringing together three, four, maybe five big legislative bills together. But right now that is still in a free form position, so we’ll have to see with the only those limited work days in December will will they actually get much done.
Terry Gerton It feels like we talk about the NDAA every time, but that was supposed to come up for a a vote in early December as well.
Mitchell Miller Right. And that looks like it’s being delayed as well. There’s as you know, many provisions in it that are getting a lot of discussion. Among them, of course, is one of them related to artificial intelligence, the AI provision in the NDAA. There’s so much agreement on the NDAA and we know that this always gets passed every year, but I think that’s the big sticking point right now is that, basically this push to put a hold on everything that would happen in the states with AI so that the federal government could try to get its arms around it. And there’s been a lot of pushback from state lawmakers as well as the house lawmakers that are involved with those people. So I think the NDAA is going to get pushed back a little bit more. Certainly they’re close — you have House and Senate negotiators just trying to bring all of this together. That’ll be a big one this month.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller, he’s Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, one thing that’s got to be on lawmakers’ minds in December is the retirement of the comptroller general, the head of the government accountability office. Gene Dodaro’s term ends at the end of the month. What are you hearing in terms of the maneuvering and the nomination for his replacement?
Mitchell Miller Well, I think there’s actually a lot of nervousness right now about what is going to happen with him. He has been a steady hand on the rudder, as you know, for close to fifteen years now, and there’s really a lot of discussion about how they’re going to get a successor to him. And frankly, it’s not really clear what’s going to happen. You have this panel of lawmakers that are supposed to nominate the next person, but they’re also looking for some guidance from the White House because that will have a big role in the type of person that replaces him. And the fact that this is, you know, one of the most prominent unelected positions in the federal government, the fact that this person is really responsible for rooting out waste, which Republicans have said they want to do and that they tried to do with DOGE, how much of a leash is the new head of GAO going to have? Will the White House go along with Republicans? We’ve seen Republicans starting to assert their own voice a little bit more, saying that they want some independence here, or will the White House crush that and say, you know, President Trump says I want this person and we’re gonna put them in? So I think we’re going to see a lot of maneuvering here in the next few weeks because he will be gone, as you know, later in the month.
Terry Gerton Do you think it’s an opportunity for Congress to push back or take back some of its authority? GAO is their oversight body.
]]>
Mitchell Miller Right, exactly. I think there is because whether they’re Republican or Democrat, I think the institutionalists, at least, believe that this type of leadership is necessary. And there’s no question about it, whatever political stripe you’re from, this office does root out a substantial amount of waste. I mean, they talk about something along the lines of a $160 billion in the past year. And so also these lawmakers, let’s not forget, when they’re leading various committees or subcommittees, they rely on the GAO for investigations to try to find out what do we need to fix. Everybody’s talking about what needs to be done to make federal government better. Well, this is perfectly an example of where you find the areas where there are problems that the GAO identifies and then Congress can act and react and and create legislation.
Terry Gerton Mitchell, all of these things together, the healthcare proposal from the White House, the delay in the agenda, even this issue of replacing the the head of GAO, point to kind of a an a miasma in the air, if you will, that maybe the White House and the president are losing their grip on Republican policy. What is the feeling on the hill and what implications might this have going forward?
Mitchell Miller I think that this is a great point because there has really been no change among House and Senate Republicans from Trump 1.0 to 2.0 up to this point, however, you have definitely seen in just the past week the real first seismic changes happening within the GOP. And I think, you know, you look at Marjorie Taylor Green and you could say, oh, well, she’s only one of more than 430 lawmakers. But the fact that she decided to resign, that also caused a lot of House Republicans to say, you know what, we’re kind of fed up with being just treated like the little brother at the card table of the Thanksgiving dinner and patted on the head and we want to actually legislate, we wanna assert ourselves a little bit more. So I think you are going to see more of that, particularly on the House side. The House side, frankly, has been kind of quiet in part because they literally were not here for 43 days during the shutdown. But I think that is going to affect the policies of the White House and what they propose. Like as we just talked about, the health care proposal, like that would have been unthinkable a few months ago that Republicans would have rebelled that much. You do see it more so on the Senate side, a little bit more quietly, but I think that is going to have a pretty big impact on what we see moving forward legislatively in the coming year.
Terry Gerton And that’s going to lead right into the midterms in 2026, so much to watch.
Mitchell Miller Absolutely.
Terry Gerton Mitchell, thanks as always for joining me.
Mitchell Miller You bet
Copyright
© 2025 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
