Four Republican Congressmen broke from their party Wednesday in the battle over federal health care subsidies, and three of those Congressmen are from our area.<\/p>\n
They signed onto a Democratic discharge petition to force a vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies as they are for the next three years. Lehigh Valley Congressman Ryan Mackenzie said he was backed into a corner.<\/p>\n
“Because we weren’t having a vote on the floor, because our bi-partisan discharge resolutions were not getting the support from the Democrats, the only option that was left to continue this conversation was the Democrat proposal that is for a clean, 3-year extension,” said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
Another Pennsylvania Congressman, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, said he also felt like signing the Democratic petition was his only option.<\/p>\n
“The only thing worse than a clean extension with no anti-fraud, no income caps, was a cliff. So I was left with a Hobson’s Choice. We all were,” said Fitzpatrick.<\/p>\n
The move flies in the face of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was proposing a healthcare bill that did not extend subsidies. He said these things happen when you have a small majority.<\/p>\n
“We have the smallest majority in U.S. history. These are not normal times,” said Johnson.<\/p>\n
But even with all the drama over the subsidies, Mackenzie said this is likely a futile attempt to protect them.<\/p>\n
“That was already voted down in the Senate, so the likelihood of the passage of this is unfortunately very low,” said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
But he hopes this will help two other petitions get more discussion, that extend subsidies for a shorter amount of time and with more safeguards against fraud.<\/p>\n
“I’m always interested in working in a bi-partisan fashion to seek relief for everyday Americans,” said Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
The third Congressman from eastern Pennsylvania to join Mackenzie and Fitzpatrick was 8th District Rep. Rob Bresnahan. It’s likely the vote on extending ACA subsidies won’t take place until the beginning of next year, with lawmakers set to go on break for the Christmas holiday later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Republican Congressmen broke from their party Wednesday in the battle over federal health care subsidies, and three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-63818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area","13":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}