Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at a Republican lawmaker who chastized her for looking into the camera during a marathon House hearing involving Medicaid early Wednesday.
The New York Democrat called out Texas GOP Rep. Randy Weber’s “terribly disrespectful comment” after he accused her of addressing viewers instead of speaking directly to Republicans during the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel discussing its markup of the GOP megabill.
The exchange occurred at around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, about 13 hours after the hearing began, according to Politico. During the session, Ocasio-Cortez pressed Republicans on whether people who suffer a pregnancy loss would be required to be employed at the time to qualify for Medicaid under the GOP’s proposed changes.
Weber instead took issue with how Ocasio-Cortez aimed her comments at those watching at home rather than lawmakers in the room.
“We’d like for you to address the Republicans,” Weber said. “Let’s have a dialogue this way and not to a camera.”
Ocasio-Cortez later picked up on Weber’s attack.
“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen, right there,” she said before looking directly into the camera, waving and saying “hello.”
“I’m talking to you because I work for you, and 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.”
When asked if she would yield back, Ocasio-Cortez responded: “I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment and I will not yield to disrespectful men.”
Weber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, another New York Democrat, also defended Ocasio-Cortez during the committee session soon after Weber’s original comments.
“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 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.”
Republicans on the committee confirmed their proposed work requirements for Medicaid would still apply even in cases of miscarriage, according to Politico.
Democrats have sounded the alarm over the future of Medicaid, as the GOP pushes to slash $880 billion from the program to fund Donald Trump-endorsed spending cuts.
One such overhaul put forward by the GOP is demanding that non-disabled adults be employed to receive Medicaid coverage to cut down on people receiving what they deem to be unnecessary benefits.
A 2023 Congressional Budget Office report estimated such a move could save the federal government around $109 billion a year and result in around 600,000 people losing their health insurance.
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