Reid Leaks Boehner Emails to Undercut Position Against Obamacare

Emails authored by Mike Sommers, House Speaker John Boehner’s Chief of Staff, indicate possible coordination between House Speaker Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) in the exemption of Congress from Obamacare.

The leak occurred Tuesday when Reid’s Chief of Staff David Krone sent the emails to Politico. It is not looked upon favorably by others when something like this is done revealing the inner workings of the deals made on the Hill.

According to Politico, the leaks show that Boehner was working behind the scenes earlier this year with Reid, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and others to save the congressional health insurance subsidies. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was also aware that these communications were being held.

Both Reid and Boehner looked to the White House for help and even went so far as to personally request for a meeting with the President to lobby for his assistance in securing the subsidies. This meeting never occurred.

A senior Republican aide sent a statement to National Review Online to defend Boehner’s actions:

Senate Democratic staff have selectively released emails between senior staffers to feed a misleading story to the mainstream media. The Speaker’s position has always been clear: he wants to repeal ObamaCare. Washington Democrats created this awful law, and any ‘fix’ that Sen. Reid and the White House cooked up would be their ‘fix.’ Our ‘fix’ – as the Speaker made clear to Sen. Reid and the White House – is repealing the entire law. All this proves is that Senate Democrats, unable to defend the indefensible, are willing to break the most basic rules of trust and decency. And it exposes to the world how far they will go to preserve their own subsidy under ObamaCare and how much they fear tough votes on ObamaCare for vulnerable senators.

The leaked emails put Speaker Boehner in a tough position now that he has publicly spoken in opposition of the congressional Obamacare exemptions. With Boehner now locked into a stare-down contest with the Senate and the White House, this has to be more than a grain of sand in his eye when he is reportedly trying hard not to blink first.