Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D) accused US Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Luzerne) of selling out Northeastern Pennsylvanian residents at a campaign event in Pittston on Saturday. Cognetti is running to replace Bresnahan in Pennsylvania’s eighth congressional district.
Cognetti highlighted Bresnahan’s congressional stock trading record during his first term in office, arguing he profited from budget cuts backed by President Donald Trump in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“ I will not stand by and let our region be represented by somebody who is in it for himself,” Cognetti told her supporters.
“Last summer, that Big Beautiful Bill vote, Rob Bresnahan was right there. He voted yes, and then when his financial disclosure came out, not only did we learn he gave himself a tax break, we learned that he made money trading stocks on that vote,” Cognetti said.
Meet the candidates: Paige Cognetti and Rob Bresnahan face off in Pa-08
Prior to voting for Trump’s budget, which cut Medicaid by $1 trillion, Bresnahan sold $130,000 in stocks from Medicaid providers and sold between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of bonds from the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority.
“He literally traded on the pain of Northeastern Pennsylvanians,” Cognetti said.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, over 21,000 residents living in Bresnahan’s district will lose their healthcare coverage once the Medicaid cuts go into effect after the elections.
Additionally, over 9,000 residents dropped their healthcare coverage through Pennie, the state’s official healthcare marketplace, after Republicans allowed Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to expire at the end of last year.
Bresnahan joined a small group of House Republicans who voted in favor of extending the ACA tax credits.
According to her campaign website, Cognetti wants to “prevent healthcare industry middlemen from denying care and medications prescribed by doctors,” and restore the ACA tax credits.
Cognetti also warned about the impacts Trump’s budget cuts will have on the rural hospitals throughout the region.
Lawmakers, constituents call out Pa. congressman’s stock trading at town hall
Geisinger Health, which operates two hospitals in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, stated that it expects to lose $180 million in revenue next year due to the Medicaid cuts. It is only expected to receive $6.7 million from the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) that was allotted for Pennsylvania.
Republicans claim the RHTP was created to soften Trump’s $911 billion Medicaid cuts, but according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, rural areas are expected to lose $137 billion in Medicaid funding, far less than the $50 billion the OBBBA set aside for the RHTP.
“ We have to flip Congress, and the very first thing that a new Congress needs to do is put the floor back under our healthcare system so that no one goes uninsured in the United States of America.,” Cognetti said.
Bresnahan’s campaign did not provide comment.
