SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
U.S. government reopened this week after a 43-day shutdown. But Congress did not address the expiring health care subsidies that were the central issue in the fight. What comes next for a Congress that has become so dysfunctional? NPR congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh joins us. Deirdre, thanks for being with us.
DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SIMON: House came in and voted for one day after they'd been gone for more than 50, but Speaker Mike Johnson says they're coming back full force. What does that mean?
WALSH: Well, the speaker says there are going to be long days and long nights ahead. The big thing they have to deal with is the rest of the spending bills to fund federal agencies. Since the bill the president signed this week was just a stopgap measure, Congress faces another deadline at the end of January to fund federal agencies, or we could be looking at another shutdown. So Congress hasn't shown an ability to pass many yearlong funding bills, so we could see another stopgap bill at the end of January.
SIMON: Of course, Republicans promise to vote on health care by mid-December. What exactly are they going to vote on?
WALSH: Well, it's worth noting that Senate Republicans promised this vote. There were some informal bipartisan talks in the Senate during the shutdown about how to deal with these Affordable Care Act tax credits that are expiring at the end of this year. One framework this Senate group is talking about would potentially extend these credits for one year and then phase in some reforms, maybe limit who's eligible for the tax credits, put in some provisions to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse. I talked to New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen earlier this week. She is a Democrat who's helping lead these negotiations. She wants a bipartisan bill the president will sign. She says she supports some of the changes that Republicans want in these tax credits.
JEANNE SHAHEEN: For example, a cap on income and who can benefit from the premium tax credits. I mean, that's legitimate.
SIMON: Deirdre, bipartisanship in the Senate is one thing, but the politics for House Republicans certainly are different. Is Speaker Johnson planning a vote on health care?
WALSH: Well, he certainly faces pressure from some of his swing-district Republicans who want some kind of extension, maybe one year on these tax credits. But the vast majority of House conservatives campaigned to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and they don't want to help extend any part of it. Speaker Johnson is blaming Democrats for the rising costs of health care. He says when they put this system into place, he claims that House Republicans has what he says, volumes of ideas on reducing costs, but we haven't seen any actual details. And based on what he said this week, he doesn't sound like this is something the House is going to move quickly on.
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MIKE JOHNSON: The Republicans would demand a lot of reforms before anything like that was ever possible. And we have to go through that deliberative process.
SIMON: And, of course, the speaker has other things to deal with. Preeminently right now, a vote to force the release of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case. How do we expect that to play out?
WALSH: Right. This issue was forced on the speaker, and we expected a vote in the House in early December. But with increasing calls from Republicans to get these files out, the speaker decided to move that up, and there's going to be a vote this week. The politics on this are really bad for the speaker and the Republican Party and the White House. The party's divided, and this bill is even picking up more and more Republican votes each day, even as top Trump officials were pressuring Republican lawmakers to even block a bill from coming up in the House. The speaker argues the House Oversight Committee has already been investigating Epstein. And we should say that the documents the committee released are from the Epstein estate. The legislation on the floor this week is requiring the release of the Justice Department's files. We expect this bill to pass easily. The big question is how big of a vote will it get in the House, and is that going to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to take up this issue?
SIMON: NPR's Deirdre Walsh. Thanks so much.
WALSH: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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