The Democrats were furious Monday over eight senators who caved to support a deal to end the government shutdown that does not include the Affordable Care Act subsidies their party had spent weeks fighting for.
The offending lawmakers include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and independent Senator Angus King, who claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits. Their capitulation comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted for weeks that he wouldn’t promise them a vote on anything, and even if he does follow through with a vote, it’s unlikely such a measure will pass the House.
Democratic lawmakers slammed their colleagues for forfeiting health care coverage for an estimated 5.1 million Americans by 2034 and increasing premiums across the marketplace.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against the deal while speaking before the Senate Sunday. “If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are gonna see at least a doubling in their premiums in the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for health care. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?”
I think raising attention to this issue is the only thing Democrats could hope to accomplish. And they did it with the shutdown.
Now if Republicans do not hold a vote, or if they vote against it, there will be much more negative attention given to them.
I believe this funding only goes until Jan 31st. So if they don’t pass the healthcare in December, the government will just be shut down again.
What are you smoking? 8 Democrats have now cosigned a poison pill of throwing millions of people off healthcare in addition to everything trump is doing with the government.
Not a single concession from republicans. This outcome is only slightly better than just approving the republican budget and there will be another budget fight in 3 months that republicans will be more prepared for.
And what is keeping the government shutdown going to do that is different? They would still lose their healthcare!
Do you honestly believe the Republicans were going to cave on this issue?
They were because they need to pay ICE agents etc.
https://archive.is/XLxFL
You sure they weren’t still getting paid? This article was from a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s changed since then.
Their budget is not infinite and there’s reason to believe they were already dipping into funding stashes they shouldn’t be out of desperation. Imo if you can defund the people terrorizing your cities that is consequential positive.
Yeah, if that were happen, when I agree. But I believe they would be the last ones to lose pay. Just out of spite.
How many innocent people would be negatively impacted before ICE lost a paycheck?
That would be a question to ask the Republicans. Innocent people are ALREADY being negatively impacted. Just because it’s not you doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t already exist.
Nothing of value was gained by capitulating, and a little bit more was lost.
To deny this is to deny how US politics has worked for the past 50 years.
In the past 50 years of government shutdowns, how many have resulted in legislation being passed?
Best case scenario for a government shutdown is one party is seen as “to blame” and loses popularity. And the other is not blamed. Fact that republicans have agreed to a vote is honestly the best democrats could have hoped for when going into this.
They certainly raised attention to how utterly worthless they have always been and always will be.
Haha, good one