U.S. Vice President JD Vance looks on, on the day U.S. President Donald Trump announces a deal with Pfizer to sell drugs at lower prices, in the Oval office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
Vice President JD Vance on Sunday said there is “a lot of waste and fraud” in Affordable Care Act tax credits that are at the center of Congress’ funding stalemate that has shut down the government.
“The tax credits go to some people deservedly and we think the tax credits actually go to a lot of waste and fraud within the insurance industry,” Vance said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“We want to make sure that the tax credits go to the people who need them,” he said.
Congressional Democrats are demanding that any legislation to fund the government include an extension for enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year. Republicans, meanwhile, want to pass a stopgap measure that would resume federal funding at current levels through Nov. 21.
Both bills failed to pass in the Senate for a seventh time on Thursday, prolonging the federal shutdown that began on Oct. 1.
With neither party budging on their respective demands, Republicans and Democrats both say the other party is to blame for the shutdown.
About 22 million of the 24 million people enrolled in Obamacare health insurance plans sold on government marketplaces received enhanced ACA credits, which lower the cost of that insurance.
The enhanced credits were introduced during the Covid pandemic in 2021. They raised the amount of financial aid to enrollees. and also made more middle-income enrollees eligible for the subsidies.
The KFF health policy research group recently said that the average premium paid for an ACA plan would more than double in 2026 if the enhanced tax credits expire.
Vance on Sunday accused Democrats of “hostage taking,” telling CBS News that there’s “a lot of willingness” among moderate Democrats and the White House to negotiate and compromise.
“But if the far-left Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, are going to shut down the government and refuse to open up the government unless they get everything they want, that’s not a negotiation. That’s a hostage taking, and we’re not going to reward that kind of behavior from Washington, D.C.,” Vance said.
Earlier on Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that Democrats “have repeatedly made clear that we will sit down with anyone, anytime, anyplace.”
“This is not about party. This is about the American people,” Jeffries told “Fox News Sunday.”
“If Republicans continue to refuse to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, then tens of millions of people are about to experience dramatically increased premiums, copays and deductibles that will result in health insurance costs doubling or tripling or quadrupling,” Jeffries said.
He also called the Republican proposal a “partisan, Republican spending bill” and said that the current spending levels the Republican bill would resume are “unacceptable.”
Fallout from the shutdown escalated in recent days after the Trump administration began mass layoffs of federal workers on Friday.
President Donald Trump — who has repeatedly threatened to use the shutdown to cut programs popular among Democrats — said on Friday that the layoffs would be “Democrat-oriented.”
Notices of permanent job cuts, formally known as “Reductions in Force,” were received by employees at the departments of Treasury, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Energy, EPA, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior.
The Trump administration on Saturday reversed layoffs for workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where hundreds of scientists received “incorrect notifications” that they were included in the mass layoffs, an official familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The firings were caused by a “glitch in the system,” the official said. Affected CDC employees included those working on measles and Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and so-called disease detectives who work at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News.
Asked about the reversed layoffs at the CDC, Vance told CBS News on Sunday that “the government shutdown inevitably leads to some chaos” and directed blame back to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Democrats.
“If Chuck Schumer and the far-left Senate Democrats are going to shut down the government, that is going to lead to some chaos,” Vance said.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this story.