U.S. President Donald Trump gestures and speaks during an event announcing an agreement between Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the price of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in the Oval Office of the White House on November 6, 2025 in Washington, DC, USA.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump has proposed a compromise on health care payments, urging Republicans to send federal payments made to insurance companies directly to Americans under the Affordable Care Act to end the government shutdown.
“I encourage Senate Republicans to take the hundreds of billions of dollars currently being sent to money-sucking insurance companies to salvage the poor health care provided by Obamacare and send them directly to Americans so they can buy better health care for themselves and have money left over,” he said in a Truth Social post on Saturday, without providing further details.
The post came a day after Senate Republicans rejected Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s proposed deal that would have allowed the U.S. government to reopen after the shutdown that began on October 1. The government shutdown is currently the longest in U.S. history.
The plan Democrats introduced Friday proposed protecting federal ACA aid for at least a year in exchange for dropping a request to include a long-term extension of Obamacare tax credits in a temporary government funding bill.
These subsidies, which are used by more than 20 million Americans, will expire at the end of December unless Congress extends them.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, said Friday that the Democratic proposal is “a non-starter.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment or details on how President Trump’s proposed direct payment plan would work.
Representatives for Sens. Schumer and Thune did not respond to requests for comment. The Washington, D.C., offices of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) did not respond to requests for comment.
Lawmakers have reached a stalemate, unable to find a compromise to end the government shutdown. Democrats want the budget bill to include health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year for 24 million Americans. Republicans, meanwhile, argue that Congress must first pass a funding bill with no strings attached and allow the government to reopen before tackling other issues.
In multiple posts on Saturday, Trump also reiterated his call for an end to the filibuster, a Senate rule that requires 60 out of 100 senators to pass most legislation. Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate. There are 45 Democratic senators and two independents who caucus with them.
Senate Republicans have been holding off on changing the rules, saying earlier this week that they do not support them. President Trump had called on his party to exercise what he called the “nuclear option” under those rules.
On Saturday, President Trump claimed he was making “progress” with Republicans on changing the rules.
“Democrats are dog-dogging the government shutdown because I’m deathly afraid of moving forward with Republicans on ending the filibuster! Whether we agree or not, Republicans must ‘blow up’ the filibuster,” he wrote.
