{"id":197284,"date":"2025-10-08T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197284\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:29:08","slug":"democrats-are-winning-the-shutdown-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197284\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Are Winning the Shutdown Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outside the White House after meeting with President Donald Trump on September 29, 2025. (Photo by Win McNamee\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

HERE\u2019S HOW YOU CAN TELL Democrats have the upper hand in the week-old shutdown fight: Marjorie Taylor Greene just endorsed their key demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTELY INSANE COST OF INSURANCE FOR AMERICANS,\u201d the Georgia House Republican tweeted<\/a> Monday evening. And she made clear that \u201csomething\u201d in this case means extending<\/a> the temporary Affordable Care Act subsidies<\/a> set to expire at year\u2019s end, which is the most visible item on the Democratic agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not in Congress when all this Obamacare, \u2018Affordable Care Act\u2019 bullshit started,\u201d Greene wrote, describing herself as \u201cnot a fan\u201d of the 2010 health care law that Republicans spent more than a decade trying to repeal<\/a>. But, she went on to explain, \u201cwhen the tax credits expire this year my own adult children\u2019s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that reason, she said, she is \u201cgoing against everyone on this issue\u201d\u2014i.e., going against her fellow Republicans, most of whom oppose an extension. And, she added, she doesn\u2019t care a whit if it bothers GOP leaders trying to hold the line against negotiations. \u201cNot a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Greene\u2019s claim about insurance costs checks out: If those extra subsidies expire, premiums for more than 20 million people buying coverage through Obamacare\u2019s marketplaces will more than double on average<\/a>, according to analysis from the research group KFF.<\/p>\n

Greene\u2019s characterization of GOP leadership also has the ring of truth. The political challenge for Republicans at this moment was entirely foreseeable, given that analysts were warning about the subsidy cliff more than a year ago<\/a> and that Democrats were trying to raise it as an issue throughout the 2024 presidential campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But despite all the indications that an Obamacare premium hike would be particularly tough on red districts and states<\/a>, and on Republican-leaning constituencies like farmers and small business owners<\/a>, GOP leaders seem to have thought they could tough out a standoff. They have refused even to discuss an extension in the context of a government shutdown fight, leaving unclear whether they are set on blocking one altogether (as more conservative members would prefer) or delaying a solution until the end of the year (as others seem inclined).<\/p>\n

And maybe that recalcitrance will turn out to be a smart political play. The contours of this fight remain fluid, with the polls somewhat ambiguous and the insider machinations predictably opaque. But one week into the shutdown fight the signs of Republican weakness are impossible to miss, up to and including Trump declaring<\/a> from the Oval Office on Monday<\/a> that, \u201cWe have a negotiation going on right now with the Democrats that could lead to very good things. I\u2019d like to see a deal made for great health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

He later walked that back a bit, with a Truth Social post<\/a> on Monday evening saying negotiations have to wait until Democrats vote to reopen the government. But his own pollsters have been warning<\/a> Republicans they let the subsidies lapse at their own political peril\u2014a warning that appears to have registered<\/a> with at least some House and Senate Republicans, even as their leaders have said no to negotiations.<\/p>\n

These cracks in the Republican wall are conspicuous because the fissures on the other side have been nearly invisible. Democratic Senate leaders have been losing just three<\/a> caucus members on votes to reopen the government under the GOP\u2019s terms, with one of them being Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman (who dissents on such matters routinely) and another being Maine independent Angus King (who caucuses with the Democrats and has said<\/a> he might soon start voting with the rest of them).<\/p>\n

This relative Democratic unity is not something a lot of people would have predicted. The party\u2019s brand is in the tank<\/a>, according to polls, thanks in part to extreme disappointment among base voters. High on their list of grievances is the way Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer capitulated<\/a> on a spending deal in March, when Trump\u2019s unprecedented and unconstitutional power grabs and the destructiveness of Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE gave Democrats a perfectly rational pretext for refusing to negotiate.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s authoritarianism is an even more valid pretext now. And if you read the actual Democratic position<\/a>, you\u2019ll see that putting new restrictions on Trump\u2019s use of executive power is among the party\u2019s demands. But it\u2019s health care at the center of this debate, and it\u2019s health care that has upended the dynamics so that even well-connected GOP strategists are now predicting their party will \u201ccave<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which on second thought maybe isn\u2019t so surprising\u2014or shouldn\u2019t be, if you know anything about the politics of health care.<\/p>\n

THE PARAMETERS AND BOUNDARIES of debate over health care policy in the United States have changed a lot since the 1940s, when Harry Truman campaigned for a national health care plan. But the basic political divide<\/a> has remained the same.<\/p>\n

Democrats have made the liberal case, seeking to create something like one of the higher functioning health systems abroad, in which the government guarantees some form of insurance for everybody and then puts some kind of controls on spending. Republicans have made the conservative case, which is that government intervention will do more harm than good\u2014and that a system with less control will ultimately be more efficient, less expensive, and promote better outcomes.<\/p>\n

The GOP\u2019s case is intellectually coherent, with plenty of serious conservative<\/a> and libertarian<\/a> thinkers to defend it. But Republicans have had a tough time selling it. The operating assumption in politics is that voters tend to trust Democrats more on health care, and polling going back to the 1990s<\/a> backs that up, with the exception of moments when Democrats have spooked voters with ambitious plans or\u2014as in the rollout of Obamacare in late 2013\u2014presided over an implementation calamity.<\/p>\n

Even in those moments, the Republican polling gains were fleeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That goes a long way towards explaining the Republican strategy at key junctures: lie about what Democrats want to do. The 2009 version of that, during the original Obamacare debate, were accusations that health care reform would lead to \u201cdeath panels<\/a>\u201d rationing care to the elderly and people with disabilities. Today\u2019s analogue is the equally false GOP claim that what Democrats really want out of the shutdown is to fund \u201cfree care for illegal aliens<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The political logic is obvious enough: Republicans lately have enjoyed the kind of polling<\/a> advantage<\/a> on immigration<\/a> that Democrats have traditionally enjoyed on health care. But the argument doesn\u2019t appear to be resonating\u2014at least not yet and not enough to change minds around the shutdown.<\/p>\n

That might explain why GOP leaders keep trying to find new, equally dishonest iterations that might work\u2014including a weekend social media post<\/a> by House Speaker Mike Johnson alleging \u201cDemocrats want hospitals paid MORE to treat illegal aliens than American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson appears to have been invoking a popular but highly dubious conservative argument<\/a>, which is about how the federal government (which supplies the majority of Medicaid funding) pays more for people who get Medicaid through Obamacare\u2019s expansion than through the older, previous criteria. But that\u2019s an argument about how money gets from the federal government to states, not to hospitals\u2014as Georgetown University research professor Andy Schneider<\/a> confirmed to me this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a state (or a managed care organization on the state\u2019s behalf) pays a hospital for emergency care can get complicated, and there are often variations in rates from hospital to hospital, but those variations are not tied to eligibility pathways,\u201d said Schneider, who spent literally half a century working on Medicaid as a congressional staffer, federal employee, and independent contractor.<\/p>\n

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REPUBLICANS AREN\u2019T JUST RELYING on misleading propaganda to try and break Democratic unity in the shutdown fight. Budget Director Russ Vought has nixed federal funding from blue state projects, while his office has produced a memo<\/a> suggesting<\/a> that furloughed workers might not get back pay once the government reopens.<\/p>\n

And that assumes they still have jobs at all. Vought has also threatened mass firings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Vought\u2019s intimidation tactics have plenty of Republicans anxious, with some openly suggesting that the administration will restore the canceled federal project funding. Even Speaker Johnson has said he hopes that furloughed workers would be compensated for their time away from work.<\/p>\n

Democrats, by contrast, appear more emboldened than ever: On Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries reaffirmed his party\u2019s insistence<\/a> that an Obamacare subsidy extension be permanent, not temporary, as some Republican lawmakers have been urging.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Democrats will stay so confident or steadfast. Even if they do, and even if Republicans start coming to them with serious compromise offers, Democrats will have to figure out how to handle them.<\/p>\n

Already some Republicans are talking up a proposal to alter the structure<\/a> of the Obamacare subsidies, so that it\u2019s no longer possible for low-income buyers to get plans with zero premiums\u2014a feature Republicans say encourages fraud and Democrats say has made coverage affordable for the people who need it most. And that\u2019s to say nothing of broader questions Democrats are likely to confront, like whether to insist Republicans reverse those Medicaid cuts in Trump\u2019s Big Beautiful Bill\u2014or to stand by those demands of meaningful constraints on Trump\u2019s executive power.<\/p>\n

One factor in these calculations will be what \u201cwinning\u201d and \u201closing\u201d in the political sense really look like. A big premium spike can be a political nightmare<\/a> for the party in charge, as anybody who lived through the Obamacare rollout can attest. That\u2019s the whole reason Republicans seem so uncertain about their current position\u2014and why now even MAGA stalwarts like Greene are suggesting Republicans sign on to an extension. If nothing else, that would seem to give Democrats leverage to demand even more.<\/p>\n

The counterargument is that many Democrats actually do care passionately about making health care more affordable. If the subsidy boost lapses, the higher costs will mean real hardship<\/a> for many millions, and 4 million more Americans with no insurance at all. Extending the subsidy boost would prevent most or all of that from happening. And insofar as Republicans are bound to support some kind of extension eventually\u2014precisely because the blowback to the spike could be so strong\u2014forcing a deal now, in this high-profile debate, would allow Democrats to claim (legitimately) it was their doing.<\/p>\n

Where and how successfully Democrats ultimately make their stand will depend on these calculations, as well as on the success of party leaders whose messaging ability<\/a> has been less than stellar. But at the moment, Democrats seem to be united and determined in a way the Republicans are not. For a party that\u2019s seemed so hapless, so helpless ever since Trump took office, that\u2019s a big improvement.<\/p>\n

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