House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday shot back at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) over an accusation that their party is “sitting on the sidelines” during the shutdown fight and as subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are set to expire.
“Well, bless her heart, that’s an absurd statement,” Johnson told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when asked about Greene’s remarks.
“Obviously, these conference calls are monitored by media, so we’re not going to have actual strategy discussions on a line where you have hundreds of people listening in, because it would be reported on the front page,” Johnson replied.
In a lengthy post Wednesday on social platform X, Greene said “more of my Republican colleagues are finally talking about the unaffordable health insurance crisis, but yesterday on our GOP conference call Speaker Johnson said he has ideas and pages of policy, but did not say a single policy plan.”
Collins had quoted Greene as saying that she found it “unacceptable” that the GOP was “sitting on the sidelines doing nothing to fix this health care disaster that is leading many Americans into financial ruin.”
Johnson said earlier this month that he and Greene had a “thoughtful conversation” on her concerns over health care premiums. He said he told Greene that “there are many Republicans in Congress that have been working around the clock on this.”
Greene also recently said her party is going to lose the House if the cost of living does not go down.
“I can’t see into the future, but I see Republicans losing the House if Americans are continuing to go paycheck-to-paycheck,” she said in a Semafor interview published Monday.
“They’ll definitely be going into the midterms looking through the lens of their bank account.”
The Hill has reached out to Greene’s office for comment.
