As the House Energy and Commerce panel entered the early morning hours Wednesday of its marathon megabill markup, Texas GOP Rep. Randy Weber told Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to address members of the committee — not the camera.
Around 3 a.m., the prominent New York Democrat attempted to address a question to committee Republicans about what the consequences might be for patients having miscarriages under the GOP’s proposed work requirements to qualify for Medicaid. The broader legislation would exempt pregnant patients and those undergoing postpartum care from having to work as a condition of getting Medicaid services, but does not explicitly mention whether people experiencing a loss of pregnancy would need to be actively employed during that time, too.
Weber interjected.
“We’d like for you to address the Republicans,” he said. “Let’s have a dialogue this way and not to a camera.”
Minutes later, Rep. Yvette Clarke, a fellow New York Democrat, came to Ocasio-Cortez’s defense.
“When the gentlelady from New York looks at the screen — if she wants to check her hair, she wants to say anything she wants to too that screen — she has the right to do so,” Clarke said. “There’s not a member on this panel that can tell another member where to look, who to look at and where they want to look.”
To Weber, Clarke continued, “You need to back up off your rules because we are not going to be dealing with that tonight.”
Ocasio-Cortez then joined in.
“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen there. Hello, hello,” Ocasio-Cortez said, waving to the camera. “I’m talking to you because I work for you. They deserve to see what is happening here because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid.”
Weber asked Ocasio-Cortez to yield her time.
“I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men,” she said.
Ultimately, the GOP counsel for the Energy and Commerce Committee said that miscarriages would be subject to work requirement exemptions under Medicaid if the condition fell under the definition of postpartum coverage for a given state.
The exchanges came amid a highly emotional and heated debate over the future of Medicaid that is expected to continue for the next several hours, with Republicans and Democrats trading increasingly personal barbs and accusations. The GOP is looking to overhaul the program to help the panel reach its $880 billion savings goal toward helping finance the party-line package central to President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda on the border, energy and taxes.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that many of the major Medicaid policies currently in the Energy and Commerce draft bill would account for $625 billion in savings, and that doesn’t even account for the impact of all the other included provisions. But the scorekeeping office also projects these proposals would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the health safety net program and 7.6 million people going uninsured.