After months of back and forth, the House has at last approved a bill to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired last month – and Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) was among the small number of Republicans to buck his party and vote with Democrats to pass the bill.
Kean, who represents a very competitive district, has long pushed for extending the ACA subsidies, but he had remained circumspect on the three-year extension bill that passed today, instead focusing on alternate compromises that would renew the credits for a shorter period of time. In a statement on his vote, Kean referenced those so-far unsuccessful bipartisan bills – and not the Democratic-led bill he voted for.
“Over the past several months, I co-introduced multiple legislative pathways aimed at forging a responsible, bipartisan solution to prevent a lapse in the enhanced premium tax credits,” Kean said. “I remain committed to working with leadership and colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to extend the ACA premium tax credits as soon as possible.”
Seventeen Republicans in total supported the bill, but fellow New Jersey Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) and Chris Smith (R-Manchester) weren’t among them. Van Drew said the bill went too far on what should be a short-term fix – “an insult to the American public,” he called it in December – while Smith focused on the fact that the bill doesn’t include the Hyde Amendment, a policy preventing money from being used on abortions.
“Do not ignore or trivialize the battered victim in the womb,” Smith said in a speech on the House floor. “Unborn babies need members of Congress to be their friend and advocate, not powerful adversaries.”
Democrats, for their part, were thrilled to see the bill come up for a vote, and cheering broke out on the House floor when it passed; Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) danced in the House hallways after leaving the floor.
The vote today was only possible thanks to a discharge petition, a mechanism that puts bills directly onto the floor if they get 218 petition signatures. Late last year, every House Democrat signed a petition to force a vote on the ACA bill following months of stalled negotiations, and shortly before the House left for its holiday recess, four crucial Republicans joined them. (Kean was not among the four.)
Since then, the credits themselves have expired, increasing premium costs for millions of Americans; New Jersey officials estimated last year that 450,000 New Jerseyans would see their costs rise without the credits.
Still standing in the way of the bill making it into law, however, is the Senate, which already rejected a three-year extension effort once before. Many of New Jersey’s House Democrats are calling on the Senate to take up their bill as-is, but Senator Andy Kim put more faith in the possibility of a bipartisan compromise rather than trying to ram through the same bill again.
“Right now, we’re giving some space for these bipartisan negotiations that are happening with a couple of our members,” Kim said. “We [voted on the three-year bill] already in the Senate, and we see the Republican senators stood on that – they opposed that. We know where that goes. So we’ll see where these negotiations land.”
