Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted “disrespectful” House Republicans after she was accused of playing to cameras while opposing proposed cuts to Medicaid.
The fiery exchange came during a marathon House Energy and Commerce Committee panel session that ran into the early morning hours on Wednesday. The congresswoman questioned how the GOP’s proposed work requirements for the health care program would impact pregnant women.
Ocasio-Cortez started to ask whether there would be an exemption to the work requirements after a miscarriage before she was interrupted by Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX).
Weber said, “We’d like for you to address the Republicans. Let’s have a dialogue this way and not to a camera.”
She was then shut down entirely as the subcommittee’s chair, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), called her comments out of order and moved to the next speaker.
Soon after, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) indicated she had Ocasio-Cortez’s back.
“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, per Politico. “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.”
Ocasio-Cortez later returned to Weber’s dig — and addressed the camera directly.
“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen, right there,” she said, before waving and saying “hello.”
She went on, “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% of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40% of your constituents are on Medicaid.”
When asked by Weber if she would yield her time, Ocasio-Cortez responded: “I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men.”
Ultimately, Ocasio-Cortez’s question was answered: A GOP counsel for the committee said miscarriages would receive exemptions from work requirements based on states’ definitions of postpartum coverage, Politico reported.
Watch the exchange below: