The other day Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted the speaker for not offering any ideas on how to reduce high health-insurance premiums. The Hill has a story today with Johnson’s response (he calls her a publicity hound). It includes what she said on the issue:
“The Democrats passed Obamacare, but yet the Republicans have never done anything to correct the problems that exist with it. And I don’t think it’s an easy thing to fix,” she said during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time.”
“However, it’s something that we should have a plan for, and Mike Johnson, for a month now, cannot give me a single policy idea,” she added. “And I’m angry about that.”
Republicans have offered changes to Obamacare, some of which have even been enacted. They ended the fines on people who don’t buy health insurance, for example. But she’s right that Republicans have been missing in action for too long on health care.
But there’s nothing forcing her to wait for Speaker Johnson to give her policy ideas. She can come up with them herself, or task her staff with doing it, or consult the various experts at conservative think tanks who have been urging action on health care for years.
One of the reasons Republicans have not made much of a dent on health policy is that backbench congressmen kept waiting for their leaders to give them a plan and the leaders kept saying they couldn’t because their members didn’t have a consensus. Maybe Representative Greene is not the person to solve this problem, but it would be good to see more policy entrepreneurship from Republican members of Congress.