ACA Vote, Fed Cuts Interest Rates, US-Venezuela

0:02Some House Republicans want to extend Obamacare health insurance subsidies that are set to expire this month. They say they want to save their party from itself as millions of voters face price increases. I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. The Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates may help the job market but hurt efforts to wrangle inflation. Will the central bank continue slashing rates into 2026? We think we're well positioned to wait and see how the economy performs. Also, the Trump administration says it seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

0:39This happens as the admiral overseeing the Venezuelan boat strikes prepares to step down. Stay with us for the news you need to start your day.

0:53Support for NPR and the following message come from GoodRx. The holidays are here, but so is cold and flu season. Find relief for less with GoodRx. You could save an average of$53 on flu treatments. Plus, save on cold medications, decongestants, and more. Easily compare prescription prices and find discounts up to 80%. GoodRx is not insurance, but works with or without it and could beat your copay price. Save on cold and flu prescriptions at goodrx.com slash upfirst. This message comes from NPR sponsor Odoo. Some describe Odoo like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable.

1:34Odoo, exactly what a business needs. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. This message comes from Amnesty International. When the world is breaking apart, but you refuse to look away, Amnesty International is the place to start. Donate today to defend human rights, and your gift will be matched at amnestyusa.org slash podcast. Some House Republicans want to force a vote that would extend Obamacare health insurance subsidies that are set to expire in less than three weeks. They're warning their own party's leaders that Republicans risk losing their majority in next year's election if they let subsidies expire without a replacement.

2:15So far, House leaders have not scheduled a vote. The Senate has. Senators today consider two health policy plans aimed at reducing health care costs for those who buy their insurance on healthcare.gov. And Paris, Selena Simmons-Duffin is here to explain. Good morning, Selena. Morning, Michelle. So start us off with some quick background about the issue here, if you would. Yeah, so these are health insurance plans that individuals can go and buy if they don't get health benefits at work. So we're talking about small business owners and workers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs. 24 million people were enrolled in these Obamacare plans this year, and almost all of them got these generous federal subsidies that came in during the pandemic to help keep their premium costs really affordable, like$10 a month for many people.

3:02Those enhanced subsidies expire in a matter of weeks. So many people are looking at way higher premium costs. On average, premium costs will double, but for some people, it'll be even higher than that. And when you say higher than that, what does that look like? Yeah, so I want you to meet Ellen Allen of Charleston, West Virginia. I talked to her first over the summer. She's 64 years old and was expecting her$500 a month plan to go up dramatically. She was rating her retirement savings to prepare for that increase. And when I reached her yesterday, she told me she'd enrolled in a plan. The bronze plan without vision and dental with a monthly premium of$1 ,967.50.

3:46So her premium for 2026 is four times this year's premium, nearly$1 ,500 more every single month for a plan that covers less. So Ellen Allen is going to be paying that unless Congress steps in and changes the law. What could that look like? Senate Democrats are expected to vote on a bill today that would extend the enhanced subsidies for three years. So that would bring premium costs down to about where they were this past year. The bill would also extend open enrollment until May of next year and do several other things like allowing automatic renewals and renewing funding for people who help you sign up for coverage.

4:24Republicans don't like this plan. They say it's too expensive, it's driving health costs up, and they point to reports of fraud to say the whole system is flawed. Well, but it seems like the Republicans took a while to coalesce around an alternative. Eventually, they did, at least on the Senate side. So what's their idea? Yeah, so it would not address those rising premium costs directly. It would instead put taxpayer dollars into health savings accounts for some enrollees,$1 ,000 for people under age 50 and$1 ,500 for people between 50 and 64. That money could not go towards premiums, but it could go to other kinds of health expenses like co-pays or over-the-counter medications.

5:02The bill would also prohibit abortion coverage in Obamacare and prevent Medicaid from covering gender affirming care. I asked Ellen Allen what she thought of the Republican health savings account, and this is what she said. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. I mean, I understand that's not a monthly contribution. Yeah, that's nothing. That is not that's insulting. How stupid do they think the American people are? OK, that plan does seem to fit with what President Trump has said he wants, though, sending money to people, but not the insurance companies. True, but Republicans would be putting way less taxpayer money into it, about$10 billion into health savings accounts versus approximately$35 billion towards enhanced subsidies.

5:43So it's not just a different delivery system. It's also a big funding cut. What are you expecting to happen today? Well, there is a super small Republican majority in the Senate, and these bills would need 60 votes to pass. neither side is likely to reach that threshold, which is not good for people who are navigating open enrollment right now and we're hoping for some relief. Polling suggests these enhanced subsidies are quite popular across party lines. So Congress may keep working on this. I do not think that these votes today are going to be the end of the story. That is NPR's Selena Simmons-Stefan.

6:15Selena, thank you. You're welcome.

6:23It's getting a little cheaper to borrow money. The Federal Reserve voted to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point. The vote was described as a close call, with more than usual disagreement among Fed policymakers. Investors were relieved by the move. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped nearly 500 points. NPR's Scott Horsley jumped into action to cover this story. Scott, good morning. Good morning, Steve. What was the dissent? Well, there were three dissents from the Fed's vote to cut rates by a quarter point. Two of those dissenters wanted to hold rates steady, and a third wanted to cut rates even more.

6:57You know, the Fed is kind of in a tough spot here. Cutting rates is designed to help the job market, which has shown signs of weakness in recent months. But inflation is still higher than the central bank would like. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says all of his colleagues want maximum employment and stable prices, but they have differing views on which is the more urgent challenge right now. All across the committee, people see the picture pretty similarly, but see the risks quite differently. You know, when unemployment soared during the pandemic, it was pretty obvious the Fed wanted really low interest rates.

7:29And when inflation soared back in 2022, it was pretty obvious that interest rates needed to be higher. Today, it's more nuanced, and the right course of action is not so obvious, and that's reflected in yesterday's split vote. In the end, a solid majority did vote to cut interest rates one more time. Are they going to cut interest rates yet again? Well, probably not right away. Fed policymakers offered some updated forecast of where they think rates are headed. And on average, they only expect to cut rates once more in 2026. Now, those forecasts are just a guess. They're not a roadmap. But Powell says he and his colleagues are going to be pretty cautious about lowering rates anymore.

8:08We haven't made any decision about January, but as I've said, we think we're well positioned to wait and see how the economy performs. We are going to get a whole lot more information about both inflation and unemployment before the next Fed meeting in January. And that's something we have been really starved for in the last couple of months. Because of the government shutdown, we never got those numbers for October, and the November numbers have been delayed until next week. So the next time Powell and his colleagues gather, we may have a clearer picture of which way the economy is headed. Scott, I want to ask about the bigger picture here because over the last several years, we've had this problem with inflation.

8:45It still hasn't gone away. People are concerned about the cost of living because their purchasing power effectively has gone down 20%, 25 % over the last several years. Isn't the Fed concerned that lowering interest rates will bring inflation back up again? If Powell was asked why he and his colleagues seem to be focused on the job market right now when there's so much concern about high prices, even though inflation has come down a lot, it is still above the Fed's 2 % target. And part of that's because the president's tariffs are pushing up the price of imported goods. Now, Fed officials generally don't think tariffs are going to have a long-lasting effect on inflation, but they've been burned before, so Powell says they're not taking any chances.

9:25We hear loud and clear how people are experiencing costs. It's really high costs. And a lot of that is not the current rate of inflation. A lot of that is just embedded higher costs due to higher inflation in 2022 and 23. Once prices go up, they rarely come back down. But if you're lucky, rising wages outpace those price hikes. Powell says the best way to help with affordability is not only to get inflation down, but also to make sure we have a really strong job market. And Pierre Scott Horsley, thanks so much. You're welcome.

10:02President Trump was the first to say that the U.S. military seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi released a 45-second video showing what appeared to be U.S. forces and the Coast Guard rappelling from a helicopter onto the tanker. There's been a U.S. military buildup near Venezuela in recent weeks as Congress pushes for answers about U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats and specifically a September 2nd incident when the U.S. military killed two men who survived an initial round of strikes. So much to talk about, so we have called Steve Walsh, who covers the military for WHRO in Norfolk, Virginia.

10:37Steve, good morning. Morning, Steve. Why did the administration seize this oil tanker? Well, the details are just coming in, but after the president confirmed the seizure, Justice Department head Pam Bondi posted on social media that it was an oil tanker U.S. authorities had been watching and that it was used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. This could be a ratcheting up of not just military but economic pressure on Venezuela and its president, Nicolas Maduro. I want to clarify the law here. Venezuela has already called this piracy. President Trump was asked, what are you going to do with the oil?

11:10He said, I guess we'll keep it. The U.S. just took the oil. Is there some legal basis for this? Well, there is a court order to do this, so this may not be part of a larger effort to seize all the oil coming out of Venezuela. Okay, so we'll continue following that aspect of this. Now, I want to ask about the broader U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean. Admiral Alvin Halsey, who had been overseeing the Venezuela boat strikes, is stepping down this week. How important is that? Well, we still have not heard a lot publicly about why Admiral Halsey is leaving. It's an incredibly unusual move for a top commander to leave one year into what is typically a three-year assignment.

11:52Halsey oversees Southern Command, which includes any military operation around South America. There had been some media accounts that Halsey had a run-in with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, but again, Halsey is not commenting and NPR has not confirmed that. He submitted his resignation about a month after the first deadly strike in September against a boat in the Caribbean that killed four people, which the Trump administration claims was carrying drugs. Keep in mind, this operation started out as an effort to go after migrants using traditional means like Navy destroyers paired with Coast Guard law enforcement team.

12:27I talked with a friend of Halsey. Retired Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris hasn't spoken to Halsey since he announced he was resigning, But he says the man nicknamed Bull would not have acted out of emotion. Bull always evaluates everything based on his beliefs, his beliefs in his country, what the Constitution says, what his responsibilities are to higher authority, to the forces that are under him. I think all those things are probably part of what factored into whatever decision he made. Halsey did appear before lawmakers this week to try to address concerns over the ongoing boat strikes, but that was behind closed doors.

13:09We don't know what was said, but reports hint that Halsey was at least diplomatic. Okay, so what happens now? So, well, the fact remains that no top U.S. military official has really addressed lawmakers' concerns. They're still demanding both the video of that September 2nd strike and the legal rationale Now, the administration says that it is used to carry out 22 strikes against alleged drug boats that have killed 87 people. And as for Halsey, he's officially stepping down in a change of command ceremony slated for Friday at Southcom headquarters in Florida. WHO's Steve Walsh in Norfolk. Thanks so much.

13:47Thanks, Steve.

13:52And that's up first for this Thursday, December 11th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. For your next listen, why not consider this from NPR? Here at Up First, we give you three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you. Learn about a big story of the day in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's Up First was edited by Diane Weber, Raphael Nam, Andrew Sussman, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Bach, Nia DeMoss, and Christopher Thomas.

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