A swing-district Michigan Democrat in Congress says she won’t support a resolution to re-open the federal government without including an extension of healthcare tax credits as part of the bargain.
The House Republican majority is trying to pressure Democrats like Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City) to vote to re-open the government first and save negotiations on health coverage for later. McDonald Rivet won her first congressional election last year in a district that also went for President Donald Trump.
Rivet has crossed party lines on some votes, but she said Friday that delaying discussion on healthcare tax credits would be a mistake.
“People are getting their healthcare premium bills now, and the marketplace opens on November 1,” she told Michigan Public Radio. “So, they need to know whether or not those tax credits are going to be available.”
Rivet said it taking healthcare off the table would be a mistake.
“To just pass a resolution knowing that this crisis is happening right now on the idea that in the future there will be a negotiation is irresponsible,” she said.
Republicans, meanwhile, kept up the drumbeat of trying to hang blame for the shutdown on congressional Democrats, even though the GOP controls the House gavel.
“Democrats are holding the American people hostage using you as leverage to demand more wasteful spending,” Michigan Representative Lisa McClain (R-Bruce Township) said Friday at a gathering of the House GOP leadership team. “That’s what they want.”
But the GOP House majority is not universally on board with waiting on extending the subsidies. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, posted on X that she is breaking with her party leadership on this.
