On the House floor Monday night, House Speaker John Boehner urged his House colleagues to pass amendments to a bill that would keep the government funded and avert a shutdown.

The amendments, he said, were necessary changes to Obamacare, including one that gets rid of what he called an "exemption" for members of Congress and their staff.

"Get rid of the exemption for Members of Congress," Boehner said. "It’s a matter of fairness for all Americans."

But new, leaked emails paint a different picture of how Boehner fought privately to maintain certain health insurance subsidies for federal employees under the Affordable Care Act.

The emails were first reported by Politico, which detailed how Boehner worked with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) to preserve these subsidies that have become a source of controversy in Congress over the past few months.

A brief history: The perception that some lawmakers and Congressional staff are "exempted from Obamacare" began when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed an amendment to the Affordable Care Act designed to embarrass Democrats. It required that members of the legislative branch and their staff purchase health insurance through the exchanges.

Democrats agreed to a similar provision, but there was a problem with the legislative language: It didn't offer a clear way for Congress to continue paying a part of its employees' health premiums, as most public and private employers do.

The Office of Personnel Management has since interpreted the Grassley amendment to mean that the federal government may offer tax-free subsidies to help members of Congress and their staff buy exchange health plans. Many Republicans contest that legal interpretation, saying it has set up a "special exemption" for Congress not contemplated by the law.

The proposal that House Republicans voted on Monday night would have ended those subsidies. This has caused angst among both Republican and Democratic staffers, who correctly fear that it would significantly hit their pockets.

Boehner railed against the so-called "exemption" for Congress, but the politics of the ploy were better than the practicality. In July, Mike Sommers, Boehner's chief of staff, went through David Krone, Reid's chief of staff, to try to set up a meeting with President Barack Obama to find a way to maintain the subsidies.

Business Insider obtained the email exchange (which you can see below) in which Krone requests that they come up with a different cover story than Obamacare for the meeting.

"People will know we are going down there," Sommers wrote. "We can't let it get out there that this is for the [Speaker] and [Leader] to ask the President to carve us out of the requirements of Obamacare. ... I am even ok if it is the President hauling us down to talk about the next steps on immigration."

Krone responded that the White House would love to say the meeting would be about immigration.

"I really don't care what it is about — it just can't be about what we know it is about," Sommers wrote back.

The meeting never happened. But it appears that Boehner's public reversal on this position made Reid and Democrats reach their breaking points.

Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, accused Reid's staff of selectively leaking emails. And he said there is not a disparity between Boehner's public and private positions.

"The Speaker’s position is clear: He voted against ObamaCare, and he wants to repeal ObamaCare," Steel told Business Insider.

"If the Senate Democrats and the White House wanted to make a ‘fix’ to the law, it would be their fix. The Speaker’s ‘fix’ is repeal. This is just a desperate act by Harry Reid’s staff to protect their own subsidy."

A GOP leadership source accused Krone of pulling this kind of "sleazy stunt" — selectively leaking emails — before, pointing to a September 2012 story in The Las Vegas Sun after frustration with Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) about an online poker bill.

Nevertheless, the revelations put Boehner in a tricky position. And the leaks are sure to increase distrust among the two sides, with no immediate end to the government shutdown in sight. Politico also reported that, at one point, Boehner "wondered aloud at one point whether he and the Nevada Democrat could quietly slip some language into a bill to end the problem without it receiving any public attention."

The emails between Krone and Sommers are below:



