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The coming weeks will put Republicans to the test on an issue with which the party, and the broader conservative movement, has long struggled: ObamaCare.

Now that the government shutdown is nearing an end, negotiations about how and whether to extend the enhanced subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year will ramp up — with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) promising a vote on extending the subsidies in December as part of a deal to end the shutdown.

The issue is poised to roil the party and the broader conservative movement just as it has for more than a decade now, including through the bruising, failed attempt to repeal ObamaCare during President Trump’s first term.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that Republicans will negotiate on the subsidies only after the government reopens, and last week he declined to commit to hold a vote on extending the subsidies in the House. There are conflicting opinions among Republicans about how to handle the looming expiration.

Republicans insist that they have plans for how to tweak and reform health care and the tax credits and regularly argue that the Affordable Care Act actually increased health care prices. But as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has complained, there is not a clear vision about what Republicans want to do on health care more broadly.

Johnson in recent weeks has pointed to a years-old Republican Study Committee health care report when asked about GOP health care plans, and he said that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) is working with the chairs of three House committees to compile a Republican health care plan. But there is still plenty of uncertainty about how the issue will be resolved — with Democrats hoping, and Republicans warning, that failing to get it right on health care could have catastrophic electoral consequences for the GOP next year.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo over the weekend that if Republicans don’t adequately deal with health care, “we’re going to get killed” in next year’s elections. “It’s about winning. We have to win the midterms.”

On the tax credits specifically, Republicans in Congress have staked out opposing positions on how to address the subsidies. A group of House moderates previously signed on to a one-year extension, while others would prefer to let the tax credits expire altogether — noting that Republicans never voted for them in the past.

GOP leaders have floated reforming the subsidies with income caps and stricter measures to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” A bipartisan group of House centrists earlier this month proposed a plan that would extend the subsidies for two years and implement income caps.

But Republicans have been floating other reforms that could be tougher to get Democrats to agree to, such as adding Hyde Amendment-like provisions to prevent the funds from flowing to abortion providers.

“You can't be funding abortion with these new subsidies that they're talking about putting back in again. You've got to have Hyde protections in order for anything to happen at all,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said last week.

Beyond Congress, the Economic Policy Innovation Center and

© The Hill