Mike Johnson Waffles When Jake Tapper Presses Him On Committing to Bringing Up a Bill on Obamacare Subsidies

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) would not commit Monday when CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed him on bringing a vote to the floor to address health care affordability before the ACA tax subsidies expire.

The eight Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the continuing resolution Sunday night to help reopen the government did so with the belief that Republicans would begin healthcare talks. Under President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, tax subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year and cause premiums to skyrocket.

“The problem is when you’re subsidizing insurance companies, they just jack the rates up even higher,” Johnson said. “I mean, we’ve been seeing this over and over and over. So the solution is to get …at the root causes.”

Johnson said House Republicans have “a lot of ideas that we’d like to bring back to the table, because that will actually solve the problem and not just subsidize insurance companies.”

Tapper asked, “So you’re not committing to bringing up a bill that deals with the Obamacare subsidies before they expire?”

“I’m not committing to it or not committing to it!” Johnson said. “What I’m saying is that we do a deliberative process. That’s the way this always works, and we have to have time to do that. And we will in a bipartisan fashion.”

Tapper asked, “If something passes the Senate, it would only pass on a bipartisan basis. Would you bring it up to extend the subsidies?”

“I can’t commit to anything that hasn’t even passed through the Senate yet,” Johnson said. “I mean, I never done that. I’m very consistent. I’ve been Speaker for over two years, and one of the reasons I’ve held the gavel is because I don’t go out and predetermine outcomes. It’s a member driven institution, as it should be, and I’m really insistent about that. We’ve got to get back to regular order, and that’s what we’re doing.

Watch the clip above via CNN,