There's a new front in the battle over Obamacare: Republican congressional staffers are angry at their bosses for trying to deprive them of affordable insurance. [...] "I understand it politically, and as a talking point," one rank-and-file Republican staffer says of the Vitter and McCaul measures. "But Congress literally threw staff under the bus on this…You're hurting staff assistants who are sorting your mail." Staffers don't make as much money as you may think, he adds. "When I started on the Hill answering phone calls, I'd hear people saying, 'You're a rich congressional staffer,' and I'm like, 'you must be out of your mind.'" Some low-level congressional employees make as little as about $28,000 a year; House staff salaries are the lowest they've been since 2007.

Congressional Republicans decided that one way to really jam Democrats was to make them vote to keep their subsidy for their health insurance by killing a Republican spending bill that would take them away. Who they were really jamming are the people who work for them The main reason the subsidy for congressional staff covered by Obamacare exists is because leadership fromdemanded it: They didn't want to risk losing staff who wouldn't be able to afford to work for them any more if they had to pay the entire bill for their insurance. Now House Republicans are showing them how much they really care. The good news is, we should get some much juicier leaking about the GOP civil war from anonymous staff looking for revenge.