Nice Time: Four House Republicans Defy Mike Johnson To Force Obamacare Subsidy Vote
And another GOP Rep. is retiring.
In one of the greatest loosenings of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s grip since his family installed Covenant Eyes, Republicans are revolting! Now, a day after the end of Affordable Care Act open enrollment, four of them — Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York — have defied Johnson’s orders to euthanize the issue and signed a discharge petition, forcing a vote on a three-year extension on Obamacare subsidies.
But don’t say Mike Johnson has lost control of the House! He has not lost control of the House!
Then he bravely dashed away, quick as his Weejuns could carry him.
At least his family’s gooning presumably remains under his control.
Saving the subsidies would seemingly be for Republicans’ own good. The base rate of health insurance premiums has increased 26 percent for ‘26, and that’s just from insurers jacking up prices because they can. Then after the tax credits expire, premiums will be more than doubling, up 114 percent, says KKF (which is formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, but just going by letters now). And for some people they will go up much more than that. Especially older people. KFF found that for a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 a year, losing the enhanced tax credits would increase their premiums by about $1,900 per month. You know, the exact demographic most likely to go for Trump, and just in time for midterms! Republican voters don’t give a rat turd what happens to anyone else, of course, but how loyal will they stay when their own health insurance bill rockets to the price of an entire mortgage payment on a Boca condo, and the only medical care they can afford is from a cash-only strip-mall veterinarian? Is BIDEN DID IT going to fly? We’ll see!
And Obamacare is wildly popular, with about 74 percent of voters supporting extending the subsidies, and even half of Republicans. But Trump has something better. Those concepts of a plan! So far that is a deal on weight loss shots, and TrumpRx is coming soon. And maybe Trump will give everybody a one-time payment of $2,000 for their Health Savings Accounts. That should about cover it for the whole family for the rest of their lives, right?
And then drug prices will come down in America because Europe will get charged more or else we won’t buy foreign cars anymore or something.
Then drug prices will go down 600 percent! Shit, drug companies are going to pay you to take them!
It’s starting to seem less like Republicans don’t care if poor, old and/or sick people die of preventable causes in some ditch, and more like they actively and enthusiastically do want that, with their entire dark little hearts.
But for Representatives, especially in purple districts, it’s a real bad look, and they want to get at least a performative “I tried” on record, so low-information voters will skip over how they voted for the Big Blah Blah Bill that did exactly this thing they now claim to not want. Because the subsidies are already dead on arrival, unfortunately, with no chance of passing the Senate, which rejected a similar extension just last week. And it’s too late now for next year’s premiums anyway.
Before the mutiny, Republican House Reps were rubbing all of their brain cells together to come up with their own plans.
But the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee struck all of their proposals down, because being Trump’s autopen means Reps can’t even have one single stocking stuffer to take home for the holidays. And Lawler et al got fed the fuck up.
Mike Lawler wants to bring health care costs down? But that would require doing a socialism! Oh, what a pickle.
And now a record 44 House members have announced they will retire; Republican Dan Newhouse of Washington, one of the last remaining Trump-impeachment voters, is the latest.
Guess they don’t want to work on Mikey’s farm no more.
[AP / NPR / The Spokesman-Review]
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"Republicans are revolting!"
This is not news.
"Republicans are revolting!"
You said it, they stink on ice.