Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee of Monday, December the 15th, 2025.

May I have roll call, please?

Supervisor Portonato Pass.

Present.

Supervisor TAM present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

And uh could you provide instructions on online participation?

Thank you.

Of course.

Public participation is allowed in person and online via Microsoft Teams.

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Only matters within the committee's jurisdiction may be addressed.

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Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And we will go to the federal legislation update from CJ Lake.

And this is the last hearing for the congressional term, isn't it?

For the year.

This is the this is the last week that Congress will be in session for 2025.

Yes.

So good afternoon, everyone.

And congratulations on making it to Congress's final week.

The House and Senate are back in session this week, and they will be out of session starting December 19th, and they won't come back to DC until the first week of January, which is January 5th and 6th.

I'm sure many of you have already heard, but the major focus for this week will, of course, be the ongoing uh health care affordability crisis.

The House is expected to vote this week on a proposal drafted by uh House leadership dubbed the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act.

Um, this is intended to address the sharp rise in health care premium set to take effect at the start of next year, but of course, does not extend uh the expiring Affordable Care Act uh enhanced premium tax credits.

Last week, the leadership team met with top Republican leaders to discuss whether to allow an amendment process on the House floor for this health care bill.

Um, this is an effort to try to garner um additional support or at least to provide an off-ramp for a group of moderate Republicans that are seeking uh to support a discharge petition that would extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits uh for one year and two years respectively.

Currently, there are two discharge petitions that have been filed on this issue.

One uh led by Brian Fitzpatrick that would extend the enhanced premium tax credits with um some additional eligibility requirements for two years, and another um by uh Jen Kiggins from Virginia, also a Republican for one year again with also eligibility requirements.

Um negotiations were ongoing over the weekend uh about a potential amendment vote um for these two measures, or at least one of these two measures, either on the floor or in the rules committee.

Um those broke down this morning when uh House leadership insisted that Fitzpatrick in particular, which is again the two-year extension, provide a budgetary offset in order to pay for the extension of the enhanced premium tax credits.

This was not a part of the negotiation up until this morning, but seen rather as a way from the leadership to quash any ability uh for Fitzpatrick to bring this to the floor.

Um, they are still, the moderates are still planning uh on filing their bills as amendments in the rules committee.

Um, but the rules committee is at least on the Republican side, stacked with very conservative members that are opposed to extending the enhanced premium tax credits at all.

It's also interesting that uh Republican leadership would use uh the need to find budgetary offsets as a reason for to add this as an additional requirement, considering that under the uh OBBBA, they use the uh current policy baseline, which means if you remember back to June and July, that existing tax credits that are on the books do not count towards the deficit as the current policy baseline, but instead they went back to previous policies saying that these tax credits in particular do add to the deficit and they do need to find offsets.

So this reversal in policy was used to basically quash uh the ability for Brian Fitzpatrick to build it to bring this to the floor.

Um so without an agreement in hand, the moderates plan to offer their bill again as an amendment, which we do expect will fail.

Um, but there are a few options left, uh, but it's unclear kind of where they go next.

In addition to the two discharge petitions that are currently available to the Republicans, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has his own discharge petition on a bill that would extend the uh the ACA credits for three years.

This is consistent with the approach taken by the Senate Democrats uh that uh had a vote on this in the Senate last week, which of course um failed uh by on partisan lines.

Uh in the Senate last week, um, they also rejected the Republican approach, which was a bill that was introduced uh by Senators Cassidy and Crapo.

Um that would provide $1,000 to health savings accounts for certain people that enroll in bronze level plans and a whole host of other items that do not include extending the enhanced premium tax credits under the ACA.

Um, so with very few days left uh in the in the year on the legislative calendar, um we're pretty much in the same place that we were last week uh on the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, which is getting nowhere fast.

Um, and we do anticipate that uh the premium increases will likely hit starting 2026 uh and Republicans will not have a policy or a plan um in the beginning of uh of the year.

In addition to that, uh the White House has been out to lunch on this as well.

They did not have an additional plan uh in order to allow uh the extension of these credits.

Um they had this kind of outstanding proposal um that collapsed a couple weeks ago, and they have not uh returned to uh Congress with an updated plan.

Um so I'll stop there.

And of course, Emily, if you have any additional um tidbits that you'd like to weigh in on, um floor is yours.

No, I mean, no, I would just say, and I know we had this kind of back and forth um last week uh during our call, but the bottom line is Congress is not going to address this.