Congress returns next week to Capitol Hill in the now-familiar position of having left for recess without meeting a deadline that is hitting millions of Americans in their wallets and pocketbooks.   

The scheduled return date for the Senate is Jan. 5 and for the House Jan. 6 – six days after the expiration of Biden administration "enhanced" subsidies for health-insurance policies through the Affordable Care Act marketplace that is estimated to impact 22 million enrollees. 

While the issue has immediate implications, it also looms large over next year's midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.  

Republicans in the GOP-controlled Congress, or at least those in leadership, argue the ACA, the signature legislation of another former Democratic president, Barack Obama, is a failure that should no longer be propped up with taxpayer-funded subsides, in addition to concerns about fraud and extending a program enacted during the pandemic.

Congressional Democrats support extending subsidies and warn of dire economic consequences for Americans who will be without them. But they don't appear to have enough votes in both chambers to pass legislation to extend them.  

The resulting partisan standoff comes roughly just five weeks after a federal government shutdown that began while Congress was also effectively on recess.

 The shutdown started Oct. 1, and didn't end until Nov. 12, when the House finally passed a temporary spending bill.

The lower chamber went on a 54-day break, from mid-September to mid-November, without resolving the funding impasse, while the Senate took several recesses during that period. 

During the 43-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, a total 1.4 million federal workers were either furloughed (sent home without pay) or continued to work without pay, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

However, the temporary spending bill passed in November that ended the shutdown included full-year funding for only three of the 12 annual spending bills, with the remaining nine running on stopgap funding that expires Jan. 30, 2026. And Congress has not passed any spending bills since the shutdown ended, according to The Washington Times.

“It’s going to take every minute” until the deadline to pass the remaining nine bills," predicted Delaware Democrat Sen. Chris Coons. 

To be sure, Congress now has less than four weeks to pass a comprehensive spending package or another temporary one to avoid two shutdowns in four months. 

Democrats and Republicans each told voters they emerged victorious in the past fall's political shutdown battle, as they likely will over the subsidies and another potential shutdown – with the midterms now roughly just 11 months away. 

On subsides in particular, four House Republicans running for reelection in competitive districts broke ranks before Christmas recess and backed a Democrat measure to force House GOP leader Mike Johnson to vote on the subsidies.

While four moderate Republicans – New York Rep. Mike Lawler and Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie – are trying to keep their conference's narrow majority, a larger issue is the demographics of the enrollees projected to see the highest premiums with the end of the enhanced subsidies, or tax credits. 

They include early retirees, middle-income households, small business owners, black and Latino consumers, and residents of states that President Donald Trump won in 2024, according to CNBC.com.

“When leadership blocks action entirely, Congress has a responsibility to act,” Lawler said. “My priority is ensuring Hudson Valley families aren’t caught in the gridlock.”

Said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries: "The Republican health crisis is devastating Americans" and the voters are rejecting the GOP's extreme "my-way-or-the-highway" approach to legislation "as we saw in the off-year elections last November." 

Even if a measure to extend the subsidies gets a full House vote and passes, it faces long odds in the GOP-controlled Senate, which on Dec. 11 voted down a Democrat-led proposal to extend the subsides for three years.

“Under this proposal, people making $500k+ per year would continue to be eligible for what were supposed to be temporary COVID-era subsidies,” a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune wrote in a social media post after the vote. 

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, one of only a handful of GOP senators who supports preserving the credits, said premium prices are "way too high" and that many parents in Missouri are "scared to death they’re not going to be able to take their kids to the doctor."