Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walked away from a Republican colleague on the floor of the chamber on Saturday after he was cornered over a so-called “fix” he offered for Obamacare subsidies as the government shutdown he is leading entered its 39th day.
Schumer was engaging with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) after the Democratic leader offered a proposal to reopen the government: A one-year funding extension of taxpayer-funded subsidies for Americans who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
During the exchange, Schumer admitted to Moreno that he did not yet have a written proposal.
“We can’t give you a counter in writing, but it’s very simple,” Schumer said. “Because we have two sentences we would add to any proposal which would extend the ACA benefits for one year.”
Moreno the revealed that the Schumer proposal did not seem to contain income caps, meaning people who make millions of dollars a year can obtain taxpayer-subsidized health care.
“It does still have no income caps, so people who make $1, $2, $3 million a year,” Moreno said before Schumer interrupted him.
“Once we pass the one-year fixed so people right now aren’t in difficulty, we would sit and negotiate that,” Schumer said. “[Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.)]has said that he won’t negotiate before. We’re willing to negotiate once the credits are extended, plain and simple.”
The Ohio Republican then responded, “So for one year, people making millions of dollars would still receive these COVID-era subsidies?”
At that, Schumer accused Moreno of caring more about billionaires before disengaging and leaving the chamber, according to reports.
“I was going to ask him before he stormed out of the room because evidently he doesn‘t want to hear any opposing views or actually engage in meaningful negotiation … Would he continue 0 dollar premiums, which we know for a FACT, have enormous levels of fraud,” Moreno said.
“If he had stayed, I would have asked him a third question: Does he want these monies to go directly to insurance companies?”
President Donald Trump appeared to gain some leverage
in the ongoing government funding standoff Thursday after Senate Democrats sought to link a funding deal to an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies.
What began as an effort by Democrats to pressure Republicans during the shutdown negotiations has shifted in Trump’s favor, following a new proposal he unveiled on Truth Social.
In his post, the president announced a plan to redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in Obamacare subsidy payments from insurance companies to direct payments for American citizens.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote.
“In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare. Unrelated, we must still terminate the Filibuster!” he added.
Conservative commentators lauded the proposal as “genius,” noting that the former president has effectively recast himself as an advocate for direct-to-consumer healthcare freedom. They said the plan reframes the debate as “healthcare for the people” versus the Democrats’ defense of “big insurance.”
Shortly after Trump’s post, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) announced that he was working on legislation to turn the proposal into reality.
“Totally agree, @POTUS! I’m writing the bill right now,” Scott said. “We must stop taxpayer money from going to insurance companies and instead give it directly to Americans in HSA-style accounts and let them buy the health care they want. This will increase competition & drive down costs.”
A newly declassified memo, released Friday by Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, shows that U.S. intelligence officials concluded Russia did not play a significant role in Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
Paul Sperry, a senior reporter for Real Clear Investigations, took to X to report that sources informed him that there are damning text messages and emails showing coordination between the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign aides.
“DEVELOPING: I’m told there are texts/emails indicating Hillary Clinton campaign aides directly coordinated with the Obama White House, NSC, State Dept and Intelligence Community officials in efforts to dig up dirt tying Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin in July 2016 …developing…” Perry wrote on X.
The documents released by Gabbard are the clearest proof yet that officials within the Obama administration had serious doubts about Russian interference, even as they proceeded with the investigation.
The memo, dated 2016, told then-President Barack Obama directly that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.”
While acknowledging prior reports about a possible breach of Illinois voter rolls and failed targeting attempts in other states, the memo clearly states that those efforts never compromised voting systems—and didn’t come close to altering results.
“The targeting of infrastructure not used in casting ballots makes it highly unlikely it would have resulted in altering any state’s official vote,” the document reads. It goes further: “Criminal activity also failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change election outcomes.”
The disclosure is a major vindication for Trump, who has long argued that the Russia collusion narrative was a hoax pushed by the Clinton campaign and Obama intelligence officials to sabotage his presidency before it began.
And now the pressure is turning on the people who pushed it.
FBI officials are preparing the groundwork for a possible criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and others involved in launching and running the Crossfire Hurricane probe.
According to a release from current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, career intelligence officials say Brennan deliberately kept parts of the investigation secret from other agencies and aggressively pushed to include the now-debunked Steele dossier.
This document falsely claimedconnections between Trump and Russian agents.
A 200-page congressional audit has been compiled after a secret meeting last weekend between the DOJ and intelligence officials. They’re now looking at whether to declassify even more documents, including Crossfire Hurricane notes and transcripts from special counsel John Durham’s investigation, which concluded in 2023 that the Trump–Russia connection was baseless.
Gabbard’s disclosure appears to be the first step in a broader transparency effort.
Officials are also looking at whether Brennan may have perjured himself in testimony to Congress, when he denied using the Steele dossier in the intelligence community’s final assessment. Although the statute of limitations on perjury may have expired, officials believe he could still face charges for conspiracy to commit perjury.
“Obama ordered the ICA to set Trump up and knock him off balance before he could even get started,” one senior official said. “This was an influence operation far more consequential than anything Putin cooked up. Obama and Hillary schemed the op, and the CIA and FBI ran it.”
Comey is also under renewed scrutiny. He recently stirred controversy after posting a cryptic message to social media that many saw as dangerously suggestive. According to sources, he was visited by the Secret Service earlier this year.