Weekly Washington Policy Pulse: Obamacare, Bank Leverage Ratio, AI

Summary

Balance of Power: Weekly Washington Policy Pulse

Host: Joe Mathieu (Bloomberg)
analyst: Nathan Dean (Bloomberg Intelligence)
Guest: Dwayne Wright (Senior Healthcare Policy Analyst)
Date: November 24, 2025
Main Topics: Obamacare Subsidies Proposal, Bank Leverage Ratio, CFTC Leadership, Executive Order on AI

---

Episode Overview

This week’s episode of Weekly Washington Policy Pulse on the Balance of Power podcast delivers an in-depth, real-time analysis of the latest policy moves from Capitol Hill and the White House, focusing especially on healthcare reform (Obamacare subsidies), looming changes to big-bank leverage ratios, crypto regulation updates, and an anticipated executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) by President Trump. Host Joe Mathieu and analyst Nathan Dean are joined by Dwayne Wright to dissect policy surprises in what was expected to be a quiet Thanksgiving week.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Washington Legislative Calendar & Upcoming Catalysts (00:47–02:50)

• Nathan Dean outlines the typical December legislative rush: Most policy actions wrap up early in the month as Congress and regulators prepare to adjourn for the holidays.
  • Farm Aid Package: $13B package announcement expected after Thanksgiving.
  • NDAA Delay: Defense spending language now expected December 1, with residual haggling over $32B and relevant AI language.

2. CFTC Leadership and Derivatives Regulation (02:50–04:38)

• Senate Agriculture Committee advanced Mike Selig’s nomination as CFTC Chair; confirmation likely in early December.
• Dean expects little change for swaps/futures regulations:
  • “If you're looking at the CME or the ICE world, really that regulatory framework is going to stick around.” (03:46)
  • Crypto oversight remains the key wildcard, as Selig’s SEC experience is noted.
• “Ultimately, [Selig] is just going to allow the CFTC to continue without much disruption or change.” (04:30)

3. Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence (04:40–05:41)

• President Trump is set to sign an AI executive order at 4pm EST.
  • Bloomberg Intelligence believes efforts to preempt or block state-level AI laws without Congress will likely falter in court.
  • Quote: “[The] executive order most likely will be to say...any state that implements, restricting or constraining artificial intelligence is going to face funding fights...but unless Congress passes a law...such actions will likely falter in court.” (05:16)

4. Banking: Enhanced Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) Finalization (05:42–06:25)

• FDIC & Federal Reserve expected to finalize the new SLR rule at 10am the following day.
• Key Changes:
  • SLR lowered from 5% to ~3.4–4.3% for G-SIBs (Global Systemically Important Banks).
  • Crucially: Treasuries remain in the denominator, contrary to some industry hopes.
  • “The final rule will most likely exclude treasuries from the—I'm sorry, does not exclude treasuries from the denominator. May have just made a big mistake there.” (06:17)

5. Obamacare Subsidies Extension Proposal (Healthcare Focus) (06:30–13:33)

• Guest: Dwayne Wright delivers real-time analysis on the administration’s rumored healthcare proposal.

  • White House to propose:

    • Extension of Obamacare (ACA) subsidies for two years.
    • Cap eligibility for subsidies at under 700% federal poverty level (~$110,000/year).
    • End “Zero Premium” options for lowest-income enrollees, which Republicans assert has led to fraud and rapid enrollment increases at lowest income levels.
    • Expansion of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), a key Republican priority, offering individuals more personal control and flexibility over healthcare spending.
    • “If you give people more control...it would reduce healthcare utilization...but also just give people more flexibility in how they spend their resources.” (08:34, Dwayne Wright)

  • Democratic Response and Bipartisanship:

    • Many Democrats are already open to capping subsidy eligibility, though the HSA piece remains contentious.
    • “We've seen a handful of Democrats either come out with some income limit...right around 700% of the poverty level.” (09:33)
    • The main concern is loss of the $0 premium, which affects lower-income enrollees.

  • Political Dynamics and Legislative Prospects:

    • Trump’s support likely enough to bring Senate Republicans on board, potentially achieving the 60-vote threshold.
    • Wright highlights the possibility of House passage even if most Republicans oppose, provided Democrats support.
    • If passed, the move nearly eliminates the risk of a government shutdown over this issue:
    • “If the White House bought into that and believed...this would pretty much seal the deal.” (10:54, Wright)
    • “I've always believed that a bill could pass the House. It just wouldn't necessarily have a majority support of the Republican caucus.” (12:17, Wright)

6. Lighter Moment & Podcast Close (13:33–14:24)

• Dean admits losing a shutdown wager:
  • “Full disclosure, I got it wrong and I owed a lot of people. Actually. Five folks came in for Bloomberg Coffees that I had to give because of the shutdown.” (13:41)
• Thanksgiving well-wishes and a light mention of Trump’s turkey pardoning tradition.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nathan Dean on CFTC and status quo:
  • “The industry has largely just been in the status quo at the moment just because there really hasn't been all that much tinkering with these rules, really hasn't many changes to these rules.” (03:24)
• Dwayne Wright on ACA Subsidy Limit:
  • “Right now...your premiums are capped at 8.5% of your income...as reported, [the proposal would] cap eligibility to those making under 700% of the federal poverty level, which is still roughly $110,000 a year.” (07:22)
• On zero-premium fraud risks:
  • “Many Republicans have said [zero premiums] has led to an increase in fraud. And quite interestingly, that's where we've seen the biggest increase in enrollment.” (08:00)
• On political strategy:
  • “If Trump bought into that and the White House bought into that...this would pretty much seal the deal.” (10:54, Wright)
  • “If he does jump on board and Democrats are there...I would be more optimistic that it does happen. But again, let's see what happens in terms of the details.” (12:17, Wright)
• On government shutdown:
  • “This would pretty much make the likelihood [of a January shutdown], barring something else happening, close to zero.” (12:51, Wright)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:47 – 02:50 Legislative calendar, Farm Aid, NDAA
• 02:50 – 04:38 CFTC leadership update and focus
• 04:40 – 05:41 Executive Order on AI
• 05:42 – 06:25 Enhanced Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) rule
• 06:30 – 13:33 Obamacare subsidies, ACA reform, and political implications
• 13:33 – 14:24 Closing remarks, shutdown odds, holiday banter

---

Tone & Takeaways

• Tone: Analytical, direct, with a mix of urgency and policy nerd enthusiasm, especially as breaking healthcare news interrupts expectations for a quiet holiday week. A thread of realism about legislative sausage-making and bipartisan horse-trading runs throughout.
• For Listeners:
  • Expect continued status quo in derivatives/crypto regulation amid new CFTC leadership.
  • Significant changes coming in healthcare: Watch for Trump’s formal proposal to extend and recalibrate ACA subsidies — a move aimed at shoring up the center.
  • Bankers should watch for tomorrow's finalized leverage ratio rules.
  • AI policy remains murky; real limits on state action likely require Congressional action, not just executive orders.

---

This summary offers a tightly-packed policy rundown for Beltway and Wall Street watchers alike, capturing all major developments and real-world implications without fluff or filler.

Transcript

[Commercial Narrator]

Save over $200 when you book weekly. Stays with VRBO this winter. If you haven't seen your college besties since, well, college, you need a week to catch up in a snowy cabin, take a week long vacation and save over $200. Book now at vrbo.com Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio News.

[Joe Matthew]

This is your weekly Washington Policy Pulse on the Balance of Power podcast. I'm Joe Matthew. Every Monday, Bloo senior policy analyst and friend of the show, Nathan Dean shares his weekly call on upcoming catalysts in the nation's capital. Listen for the most recent and relevant policy research from our team at Bloomberg Intelligence. Now with today's installment, here's Nathan Dean.

[Nathan Dean]

Welcome to the Washington Policy Pulse. Again, welcome to those of you who are coming to us via the Balance of Power podcast. We always appreciate you listening via that record as well. We've got a lot of interesting things. I honestly thought today was going to be a fairly light day just because it's Thanksgiving week here in Washington. But we actually got got quite a bit of stuff happening. So I'm going to run through just a couple of the more minor items and then we're going to turn to Dwayne Wright, our senior healthcare policy analyst, to talk about what's going on in the Obamacare space. So just real briefly, just for other things that are going on, we've talked in the past about this idea of a $13 billion farm aid package. Secretary Rawlins, the agricultural secretary, was just on Fox News about an hour ago and said that that package would come the week after Thanksgiving next week. So obviously, you know, the general rule of thumb that we like joke about is that everything in Washington, whether it's a holiday party or any type of legislative action or anything like that usually happens in the first week of December. By the second week of December, folks want to go home. That's usually when the regulators start taking up stuff. And then by the third week of December, everybody's out. So generally speaking, that first week of December, you're going to expect some headlines. I also want to talk a little bit about what's happening over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. So this is that small regulator that it doesn't have as much public exposure as the SEC does, but it's very, very powerful for those of you who are in the derivatives and the crypto space. So, you know, just last week the Senate, the Senate Agricultural Committee had a hearing for Mike Selig to be the next chairman of the cftc. The Senate Ag Committee actually then voted on his nomination the day next, I think he'll be passed and become chairman sometime in early December. But you know, we're going to have new leadership over the CFTC now. What does that mean? I just put a not this morning. And it largely means the status quo. I mean, so you know, there hasn't been a lot happening over at the CFTC at the moment they only have one individual who's leading it, that's Acting Chair Chairman Caroline Pham. But you know, the CFTC had received a lot more power from Dodd Frank and took authority over the swap markets and has authority over the futures markets and so forth. But the industry has largely just been in the status quo at the moment just because there really hasn't been all that much tinkering with these rules, really hasn't many changes to these rules. And I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon. So if you're looking at the CME or the ICE world, really that regulatory framework is going to stick around. If you're looking at the swaps rule from one of the banks, that regulatory requirements really going to stick around. The one caveat of this is cryptocurrency. And obviously Acting Chair Pham has been doing some work with Chairman Atkins over at the SEC on crypto and that's going to continue. Now, Mike Selig comes from the Chairman Atkins camp. He's actually a special advisor over at the sec. He understands crypto. I think he understands a little bit of the CME and ICE world as well. So I think it's going to be one of those picks that ultimately is just going to allow the CFTC to continue without much disruption or change. So again, we'll see what happens. But I think, you know, his, his confirmation will come in early December. Other things to go on is for those of you who are in the defense space, the NDAA language was supposed to be out by Thanksgiving. The House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has come out and said, now look for December 1st for that language. It looks like there's still just a little bit of haggling over that $32 billion that we talked about again in the artificial intelligence space. At 4 o' clock today Eastern, President Trump is anticipated to sign that executive order on artificial intelligence. I want to bring up Matt Shettenholm's piece real quick, as Matt Shet wrote about this just last week when the news broke that there was going to be an executive order. And the headline of his note, it says Trump probably can't block state AI laws without Congress. So this executive order most likely will be to say, look, the, you know, any state that implements, restricting or constraining artificial intelligence is going to face funding fights or you know, funding cuts, et cetera. Matt's whole point here is that unless Congress passes a law on those points, such actions will most likely probably falter in court. So again, keep that in mind as you see the headlines later today. And then finally, for those of you who are in the financial services space, the banks, the FDIC is going to finalize the enhanced supplementally leverage ratio tomorrow at 10am the reserve is reported to be finalizing it around the same day. There was a little bit of trick, trickery in my words going on here. It's because generally you need to have seven days to have a Sunshine act notice. What happens is you put out a notice saying that we're going to have a meeting within seven days. In rare instances you don't have to follow that. And it looks like the FDIC considered this to be a rare exception to that. So tomorrow at 10am look for the language to be out sometime within the 15, 20 minutes after that. So I know many of you are on the fixed income side care about this in terms of the impact of the treasury markets, but remember this actually takes the ESLR, which was at 5%, lowers it to 3 plus 50% of a G SIB surcharge. You're looking around 3.4 to 4.3 depending on the bank and the proposed rule. And the final rule will most likely exclude treasuries from the. I'm sorry, does not exclude treasuries from the denominator. May have just made a big mistake there. Does not exclude treasuries from the denominator of that rule. So okay, with all that being said, I want to bring in Duane Wright because we've actually had a lot of stuff happening right now in the healthcare space and this is all geared towards Obamacare subsidies. So Dwayne, you put out a react this morning. Can you tell us why did you put that react out and what did it say?

[Dwayne Wright]

Yeah, so thanks Nathan. And to your earlier point, hoping for a quiet week starting off the Monday with quite a bit of news. So the gist of it is, and I think we probably saw some hints of this yesterday during some news or press conference or on one of the weekly shows. The President, I guess there are rumors, it's been reported by Bloomberg, that we will see the White House make a proposal that would extend the Obamacare subsidies for two years and it would do a Whole host of other things that would address some of the concerns from Republicans which would be to cap the eligibility of those subsidies to people at a certain income. Right now if you are over 400, if you make over 400% of the federal poverty level which is about $62,000 a year, your premiums are capped at 8.5% of your income. And so it would as reported cap the eligibility those making under 700% of the federal poverty level, which is still roughly $110,000 a year for an individual. The other piece of this is to limit the availability of these so called zero premium options with the enhanced subsidies did which is an old Biden era proposal or expansion of the ACA is it essentially made these premiums pretty much zero for people making about 150 at around 150% of the federal poverty level. And so getting rid of those so that there's some contribution which many Republicans have said has led to an increase in fraud. And quite interestingly that's where we've seen the biggest increase in enrollment which is on that lower end of the enrollment scale. And then there's also some reporting that we'll see some tie in with health savings accounts which has long been a Republican priority which is to expand the availability of these under the premise that if you give people more control over their health care one it would reduce healthcare utilization as if people are more in charge of their own dollars but also just give people more flexibility in how they spend their resources. So those seem to be the key pieces of that proposal. And of course we'll be looking forward to more details on that.

[Nathan Dean]

How do you think the Democrats would respond to that?

[Dwayne Wright]

Well, you know, absent the details I think they're Democrats had already been on board with income relating the proposed the subsidies. Moving forward, we've seen a handful of Democrats either come out with some income limit that's right around 700% of the poverty level. But we did see one of the first bipartisan bills and actually go back to the pre binary change. So I think there's a lot of receptivity to it. And when you think about the fact that 7% of the 24 million enrollees have annual income above 400% of the poverty level, it's not an insignificant number of people. But it's enough where you can see the Democrats coming on board now, I think the HSA piece will be a big question mark as they've long opposed it. But I think we'll need to see the details to get a better sense of that, the bigger question will be on the lower end of the income scale for getting rid of the $0 premium option. What is that amount? Is it going back to where it was before the change? Is it somewhere in between? And so that I think that'll be a question. But you know, it is trending in the right direction. And this was always a big question for us. I think we were largely skeptical of a, of an extension, number one, but believe that if Trump pivoted in response to what we saw in the off year elections and just, and overall polling over the past several months, not just general polling, but specific polling from Republican pollsters that Trump and Republican supporters favor an extension. If Trump bought into that, if the White House bought into that and believed that there were some significant downsides to next year's midterms, that this would pretty much seal the deal. But again, it, whatever is going to be proposed has to be something that's not necessarily including any poison pills that Democrats might not support or it just would find unfavorable.

[Nathan Dean]

Great. You know, so I'm going to ask one more question, but again, if you have any questions for Dwayne, feel free to put those in the chat. But my last question is, and I think you've already alluded to this, is that if President Trump comes out with this plan and says this is his plan, he'll be able to pretty much push those House Republicans who are against any idea of a subsidy increase to come on board. Is that your view?

[Dwayne Wright]

You know, he's, he still has pretty significant sway over the caucus and tend to think that it would be enough to sway enough of the Senate members, Senate Republicans to get something to the 60 vote threshold and would then create additional momentum to get something through the House. So, you know, I've always believed that a bill could pass the House. It just wouldn't necessarily have a majority support of the Republican caucus. And I think if he does jump on board and Democrats are there, excuse me, then this is something that can get there. So I would be more optimistic that it does happen. But again, let's see what happens in terms of the details. But I will say it's interesting. I was looking ahead to that big question of will there be a shutdown in January and if this was not resolved, couldn't this be one of those areas? I think you and I have been skeptical that there would be a shutdown after these Democrats in the Senate switched sides, that they wouldn't then switch sides again to not support another cr. This would pretty much make the likelihood, barring something else happen, happening, make the likelihood of that pretty much close to zero.

[Nathan Dean]

Yeah, you know, I'm still skeptical as well, but full disclosure, I got it wrong and I owed a lot of people. Actually. Five folks came in for Bloomberg Coffees that I had to give because of the shutdown. But yes, that's it. The best coffee for the price point. So, Dwayne, thank you very much. For the rest of you, Happy Thanksgiving this week. You know, to our American followers, to our non American followers, happy Thanksgiving to you as well. President Trump is scheduled to go to Mar a Lago tomorrow afternoon. So if you're thinking of like timing of other actions, tomorrow afternoon he has the turkey pardoning. According to the poll, it's gobble and waddle this year are the two turkeys that will be pardoned. Fun fact. They're actually staying the night at the Willard Hotel like they always do. So with that, I want to say thank you again. We really appreciate it and have a wonderful week and we will talk again soon.

[Joe Matthew]

Our thanks to Nathan Dean, Bloomberg Intelligence senior policy analyst, bringing you the latest installment of his weekly Washington policy Pulse. For more from BI or to join this call live each week you can email [e-mail] that's n d e a n bloomberg.net and come back to the podcast later today for the latest edition of Balance of Power.

[Commercial Narrator]

Amazon five Star Theater presents real customer reviews performed by a real serious improv podcaster. Tonight's review, spatula for the Stars. When I'm dead and civilization eventually collapses, this spatula will remain. It will be the only rune uncovered by some unknown species of the future upon which they base their assumptions of our existence. Eggs they will posit these extinct people like to eat their eggs and this was their primary tool for cooking them. Let us teleport and put this device in the Milky Way exhibit. Five stars. Zachary, Find your perfect gift this holiday on Amazon.

[Dwayne Wright]

You know what a girl's best friend is? Not diamonds. Her lawyers.

[Nathan Dean]

From executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a fiery new legal drama. It's our own boutique women representing women you can't afford to miss.

[Dwayne Wright]

Make it rig showtime, ladies. Stand up straight then breeze into that room like a storm no one saw coming.

[Nathan Dean]

Hulu Original Series All's Fair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers terms apply.