SPRINGFIELD — U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski said Thursday reopening the federal government will take a bipartisan agreement, but she drew “a red line in the sand” on health care, warning that some premiums could double next year if Affordable Care Act tax credits are not renewed as part of the package.
“We should be talking,” Budzinski told Capitol News Illinois in an interview. “We want to reopen the government. It's nine days now into a shutdown. Next week is going to be the first week in which a federal worker is going to miss their paycheck. And so I think we owe it to the American people — we owe it to the federal workforce to be here working, to negotiate.”
But as of now, there is no deal in sight. The Senate adjourned for the week after several failed votes on a House-backed package that would have funded the government through November. The House wasn’t even in session this week.
Though Republicans control the House and have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, it takes 60 votes to advance a funding bill in the upper chamber. All but a couple Senate Democrats voted against the House package. At the heart of the disagreement is the failure to renew the ACA tax credits, which are due to expire at the end of the year.
The ACA exchange is where people without access to employer-provided health insurance or who don’t qualify for safety-net programs like Medicaid can purchase health care coverage. The enhanced tax credits were introduced in 2021 and later extended through 2025. In that time, enrollment in the marketplace more than doubled from 11 million to 24 million, according to health care research firm KFF.
This year, about 90% of the nearly 466,000 Illinois residents receiving health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace were recipients of the tax credits, according to data from the federal government. If they expire, annual premiums could more than double, with KFF estimating that the average price could jump from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026.
Budzinski, a Democrat who represents Illinois’ 13th Congressional District, called it a “manufactured health care crisis,” noting the impending impact of more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year.
“It's a pretty simple request,” she said of extending the tax credits. “We're called unreasonable. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I think, quite frankly, that's only the beginning of how we need to get to addressing the impacts of what these big changes to health care are going to look like.”
Constituents air concerns
During a virtual roundtable, some of Budzinski’s constituents laid out the consequences.
Laura Petty, a house cleaner from Alton, said her family’s health insurance premiums would increase from $310 to $800 per month without the tax credits. Petty and her husband have started having conversations about the sacrifices they will have to make if the credits disappear.
“Do we stop contributing to our retirement? Can we afford to send our child to college next year? It's a lot of uncertainty,” Petty said.
Krystle Able, a nonprofit executive and mother of three from Normal, said her monthly health are costs have already tripled to nearly $800 and could hit $1,400 if subsidies lapse.
“I’ve worked my whole life to get off Medicaid,” she said. “Now I’m asking myself whether I need to give up my job and go back on it just so my kids can get care.”
Kathy Waligora, of the coalition Protect Our Care Illinois, said the expiration of the tax credits would likely lead to higher uninsured rates, with younger adults more likely to drop coverage. This, in turn, would worsen the insurance risk pool and lead to even higher rates for those still in the marketplace.
“People are already trying to figure out how to make room for rent, child care, groceries and utilities,” Waligora said. “If these credits aren’t extended, many will have to decide whether they can afford health insurance at all.”
Budzinski appeared on the virtual roundtable from her Capitol Hill office despite the House not being in session.
“I’m in Washington,” she said. “I am ready to be a part of any conversations that are going to reopen the government.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.