Rep. Tom Cole said Democrats "put the American people through an awful lot of pain" by forcing a government shutdown over expiring subsidies tied to what he called a broken and unaffordable Obamacare program.
Appearing Thursday morning on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," the Oklahoma Republican argued that the fight was unnecessary and left critical federal workers uncertain about pay and operations.
Cole said the shutdown "put us at risk in the skies, our military people didn't know if they were going to get paid," adding that "air traffic controllers, meat inspectors, a lot of essential people didn't get paid."
The stalemate jeopardized benefits for others as well, "for nothing," he said, because Democrats ultimately only secured "the promise of a vote [on the expiring subsidies] in one chamber" of Congress.
According to Cole, that vote is unlikely to change anything because Democrats will "need 13 Republicans" on board to get to "60 votes" in the Senate, which he said isn't likely "for just a status quo bill."
Cole emphasized that most people currently on Obamacare plans "will be okay," noting that the expiring subsidies primarily affect higher-income enrollees.
"These subsidies really apply to people that make more than four times the level of poverty," he said, adding that while those households are "certainly at risk," they are also "relatively affluent."
He then pointed to the law's underlying structure as the real issue and said that there is interest in cross-party collaboration to fix the elements that don't work.
"So, look, I think both sides are interested in working on real reforms, the basic problem here is that Obamacare just doesn't work," Cole said. "It was called the Affordable Health Care Plan. It's anything but affordable."
He noted that lawmakers in both chambers have been exploring ways to address longstanding weaknesses in the system, saying, "There's some pretty serious work going on, on that, and there has been over the years, certainly in the House and I believe in the Senate as well."
Cole said he expects the long-running effort to materialize into concrete legislation aimed at overhauling the program.
"I do think you'll see a legislative package that's meant to correct some of this, but, again, we went through a lot of pain essentially for nothing," he said.
He also pointed out that the subsidies at the center of the shutdown were created and scheduled to expire by the Democrats themselves.
"So, this is pretty much a Democratic-manufactured debacle, and our people are doing the best they can to put Humpty Dumpty back together again," Cole said.
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