Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walked away from a Republican colleague on the floor of the chamber on Saturday after he was cornered over a so-called “fix” he offered for Obamacare subsidies as the government shutdown he is leading entered its 39th day.
Schumer was engaging with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) after the Democratic leader offered a proposal to reopen the government: A one-year funding extension of taxpayer-funded subsidies for Americans who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
During the exchange, Schumer admitted to Moreno that he did not yet have a written proposal.
“We can’t give you a counter in writing, but it’s very simple,” Schumer said. “Because we have two sentences we would add to any proposal which would extend the ACA benefits for one year.”
Moreno the revealed that the Schumer proposal did not seem to contain income caps, meaning people who make millions of dollars a year can obtain taxpayer-subsidized health care.
“It does still have no income caps, so people who make $1, $2, $3 million a year,” Moreno said before Schumer interrupted him.
“Once we pass the one-year fixed so people right now aren’t in difficulty, we would sit and negotiate that,” Schumer said. “[Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.)]has said that he won’t negotiate before. We’re willing to negotiate once the credits are extended, plain and simple.”
The Ohio Republican then responded, “So for one year, people making millions of dollars would still receive these COVID-era subsidies?”
At that, Schumer accused Moreno of caring more about billionaires before disengaging and leaving the chamber, according to reports.
“I was going to ask him before he stormed out of the room because evidently he doesn‘t want to hear any opposing views or actually engage in meaningful negotiation … Would he continue 0 dollar premiums, which we know for a FACT, have enormous levels of fraud,” Moreno said.
“If he had stayed, I would have asked him a third question: Does he want these monies to go directly to insurance companies?”
President Donald Trump appeared to gain some leverage
in the ongoing government funding standoff Thursday after Senate Democrats sought to link a funding deal to an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies.
What began as an effort by Democrats to pressure Republicans during the shutdown negotiations has shifted in Trump’s favor, following a new proposal he unveiled on Truth Social.
In his post, the president announced a plan to redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in Obamacare subsidy payments from insurance companies to direct payments for American citizens.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote.
“In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare. Unrelated, we must still terminate the Filibuster!” he added.
Conservative commentators lauded the proposal as “genius,” noting that the former president has effectively recast himself as an advocate for direct-to-consumer healthcare freedom. They said the plan reframes the debate as “healthcare for the people” versus the Democrats’ defense of “big insurance.”
Shortly after Trump’s post, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) announced that he was working on legislation to turn the proposal into reality.
“Totally agree, @POTUS! I’m writing the bill right now,” Scott said. “We must stop taxpayer money from going to insurance companies and instead give it directly to Americans in HSA-style accounts and let them buy the health care they want. This will increase competition & drive down costs.”
Fox News’ Peter Doocy reports the latest on the government shutdown, ‘Fox News Sunday’ anchor Shannon Bream also joined ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Senate Democrats unveiled their alternative to Republicans’ plan to reopen the government that would see an extension to expiring Obamacare credits for one year, but the move was promptly rejected by irate Senate Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced the plan in dramatic fashion on the Senate floor Friday afternoon with a backdrop of the Senate Democratic caucus in a bid to show a tangible version of the newfound unity among Democrats since their Election Day sweep earlier this week.
Schumer argued that after 14 failed votes on the House-passed continuing resolution (CR), “It’s clear we need to try something different.”
He offered to attach a one-year extension to the expiring Obamacare subsidies and to create a bipartisan committee that could negotiate further on how to deal with the subsidies after the government reopened, a clear nod to the GOP’s position that negotiations won’t happen until the government is reopened.
THUNE SAYS ‘WHEELS CAME OFF’ AS REPUBLICANS MULL NEXT SHUTDOWN MOVE
Senate Democrats mulled offers from Republicans on a way out of the government shutdown but have yet to land on a final play call as the closure blasts through records. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
“Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes healthcare affordability,” Schumer said. “Leader Thune just needs to add a clean, one-year extension of the [Obamacare] tax credits to the CR so that we can immediately address rising healthcare costs. That’s not a negotiation. It’s an extension of current law, something we do all the time around here.”
“Now the ball is in the Republicans’ court,” he continued. “We need Republicans to just say ‘yes.’”
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Republicans resoundingly rejected Schumer’s olive branch, calling the proposal a “non-starter.”
‘TWISTED IRONY’: DEMOCRATS RISK BETRAYING THEIR OWN PET ISSUES WITH GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN GAMBLE
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Republicans work to peel more Democrats to support their plan to reopen the government. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Senate Republicans universally condemned the proposal as they exited a closed-door meeting, and charged that doing a clean extension of the subsidies for one year would continue sending more and more taxpayer money to insurance companies.
“We’re not going to continue, for a year, to load up insurance companies with taxpayer dollars to get an inferior outcome,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.
“It’s absolutely insane,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., said. “And it’s kind of sort of crazy, because it’s the very people who always say that they want to take it to the big guy, but yet they’re letting the big guys profit.”
Initially, Thune had planned to hold a vote on the House-passed plan as a means to amend it and attach a trio of spending bills in a package, known as a minibus, to jump-start the government funding process.
What happens next is also in limbo. Despite Republicans’ desire to vote on the House-passed CR on Saturday, it’s in the air as to whether that will happen.
“We’ll see if something comes together that we can vote on,” Thune said. “It remains to be seen.”
It also comes after Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made a bid to have his bill that would ensure that federal workers and the military would be paid during this shutdown and future shutdowns move through a fast-track process known as unanimous consent that doesn’t require a full vote of the Senate.
OPTIMISM FADES AS SENATE DEMOCRATS DIG IN, HOLD OUT OVER OBAMACARE DEMANDS
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol after the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, May 22, 2025. (Tom Williams/Getty Images)
However, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., blocked the bill — despite it being amended to include furloughed federal workers into the mix — over lingering concerns that it still gave President Donald Trump too much power to pick and choose “which federal employees are paid and when.”
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That move prompted a fired-up Thune to question why, exactly, Peters, and more broadly, Senate Democrats, would object to the bill, given that it would solve a major pain point of the shutdown. He said that lawmakers would vote on the bill on Friday.
“In other words, we’re going to keep federal employees hostage,” Thune said of Peters’ objection.
“It’s about leverage, isn’t it? That’s what ya’ll have been saying,” he said.
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.