Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on Democrats not to fold on their health insurance demands before true negotiations begin to reopen the government.
“They want us to blink first, and we have too much to save. Protecting people is too important a task for us to give up before anything even starts,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes.”
Asked about the “rising sense of alarm about the aggressiveness of the sort of authoritarian aspirations of this government,” the progressive Democrat agreed there “absolutely is an unprecedented abuse of power,” but said “they are weaker than they look.”
“What they rely on is the impression of power, the perception of inevitability, in us giving up in advance to say, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen if I stand up, et cetera?’” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“They rely on that perception of inevitability and power so that people comply in advance and acquiesce in advance and give up in advance,” she added. “And at the end of the day, Donald Trump is at record levels of unpopularity in his tenure. The Republican House is at record levels of unpopularity. They are underwater, across the board, and they know it. And that is causing them to double down in public. But it is backfiring.”
Ocasio-Cortez defended Democrats’ opposition to the GOP funding proposal and stressed the importance of extending Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
More than 24 million Americans are enrolled in the insurance marketplace this year, and about 90 percent — more than 22 million people — are receiving enhanced subsidies. The extra marketplace subsidies saved the average customer $705 annually on their premium, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization. If they were to expire, premiums for subsidized enrollees would more than double.
“I don’t know about anybody else, but I do not think that this is just about a tax break or a small tax extender. This is about fighting not just on tax breaks, community health centers, and ensuring that we have a stability of the American health care system,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“And when Republicans use a legislative mechanism to gut the American health care system, we have to use a legislative mechanism in order to restore it and to fight for it,” she continued.
The New York Democrat called on the party to continue speaking out, saying Democrats must show Republicans that there are consequences for gutting health care.
“We have to understand that standing up matters, that our voice matters, to not give in to the cynicism because that is what they rely on in order to perpetuate this idea that … they have total immunity from consequence.”
“They will experience the consequences of this,” she continued. “But we have to be the consequence, which is why we have to stand tall right now alongside everyday Americans who want us to be standing up right now as well.”