Senate Shrugs as ACA Premiums Spike, While Trump Plays Call of Duty on a Venezuelan Oil Tanker

The United States Senate just looked directly at millions of working people, nodded solemnly, and said: “Have you tried being richer?” Because on December 11 they failed to advance two different bills meant to deal with the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that keep marketplace coverage affordable. Both proposals faceplanted at 51-48, because apparently we’re governed by a procedural haunted house where 60 votes are required to do anything besides rename a post office, according to CBS’s live coverage of the votes (CBS News).

These enhanced ACA tax credits were boosted during COVID under the American Rescue Plan and later extended by the Inflation Reduction Act, and now they’re set to expire on January 1, 2026 unless Congress grows a spine in the next three weeks, which is a fun joke we tell ourselves every year (CBS News). So what’s going to happen? People’s monthly premiums jump. Some people drop coverage. You can practically hear the insurance middlemen licking their lips.

And while that slow-motion domestic policy car crash was happening, the Trump administration decided to showcase the kind of government “competence” it only seems to access when the mission involves helicopters and chest-thumping. On December 10, U.S. forces seized an oil tanker called the Skipper off Venezuela, an operation Attorney General Pam Bondi said was done under a warrant issued weeks earlier and involved the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Coast Guard, with Navy support (NBC Los Angeles). There’s video of U.S. forces fast-roping onto the ship, because nothing says “rule of law” like action-movie b-roll for the evening news (NBC Los Angeles).

Healthcare for you: sorry, best we can do is a filibuster. Spectacle for the base: unlimited.

The Senate vote is what happens when Washington treats healthcare like a culture-war prop instead of the thing that keeps families from getting financially guillotined by a random diagnosis. Democrats put forward a bill to extend the enhanced subsidies for three years. Republicans offered an alternative that swaps actual premium help for deposits into health savings accounts, because nothing screams “coverage” like a tax-advantaged piggy bank you can’t spend if you’re broke (AP News). Neither reached the 60-vote threshold, and that’s how you end up with a policy outcome that is basically: “Premiums go up, see you in the campaign ads.”

ABC News reports the credits expire January 1, 2026 if nothing changes, which means a New Year’s surprise where the champagne comes with a deductible and the confetti is just shredded billing statements (ABC News). Oregon Public Broadcasting notes the scale of this mess: estimates around 22 million people could see sharp premium increases, and yes, some households could see costs double or worse depending on income and geography (OPB).

And the wild part is how deliberate this is. The Senate saw the consequences coming, read the headlines, heard the warnings, and still couldn’t be bothered to keep subsidies going. Axios flat-out points out how little time is left and how divisions are still locked in place (Axios).

The politics are uglier than the policies

The ACA subsidy vote is a self-own that lands hardest on regular people, because it’s designed to. It produces pain on a calendar. It sets up the classic Washington move where suffering becomes leverage. Premiums jump, panic follows, and suddenly we’re all supposed to applaud whichever side “fixes” the crisis they let happen.

Republicans are betting they can posture as the party of fiscal restraint while quietly letting millions eat the cost. Democrats are betting they can shame enough holdouts to get an extension through before January 1, 2026. Both sides are also betting you’ll be too exhausted to notice the Senate had the votes to fail both bills in the exact same 51-48 pattern we’ve been dealing with the last 10 months.

Gavin Newsom would never let this level of unseriousness slide

California has been the living rebuttal to the idea that Democrats can’t govern. The whole Newsom project has always been: make the state function, expand coverage, defend the social safety net, then watch right-wing media foam at the mouth because the apocalypse didn’t happen. The ACA itself survives because Democratic states kept treating it like a real system people rely on, not a rhetorical device.

And you can feel the difference between “government as a service” and “government as a reality show.” One approach is: keep subsidies stable so families can plan their lives. The other approach is: deploy tactical aesthetics offshore and dare your opponents to criticize it.

Here’s what makes it extra gross: this isn’t even a close call morally. If Congress lets the enhanced ACA tax credits lapse on January 1, 2026, people who did the responsible thing and enrolled are the ones who get punished. The people who work, budget, parent, and try to keep their heads above water are the ones who get the bill.

And MAGA (bot farms in Israel) will still log on and call that “freedom,”. Joe Rogan and others are probably figuring out how to spin this while taking fat checks from Russia.

So yeah, fun times ahead!