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?”
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.
Ending a shutdown is an act of legislation, so every past government shutdown in history has resulted in legislation being passed.
Technically true, which is the best kind. But also intentionally ignores the spirit of my comment.
That’s also true. To be honest, I don’t know of any examples in which a government shutdown directly resulted in non-economic legislation being passed, if that’s what you mean. That’s not to say I agree that the best you get out of a government shutdown is for one party to carry more blame than the other–I’ll have to spend more time looking into it.