Copyright Fast Company
What led to the shutdown Democrats made several demands to win their support for a short-term funding bill, but the central one was an extension of an enhanced tax credit that lowers the cost of health coverage obtained through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. The tax credit was boosted during the COVID-19 pandemic response, again through President Joe Biden’s big energy and health care bill, and it’s set to expire at the end of December. Without it, premiums on average will more than double for millions of Americans. More than 2 million people would lose health insurance coverage altogether next year, the Congressional Budget Office projected. “Never have American families faced a situation where their health care costs are set to double — double in the blink of an eye,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. While Democrats called for negotiations on the matter, Republicans said a funding bill would need to be passed first. “Republicans are ready to sit down with Democrats just as soon as they stop holding the government hostage to their partisan demands,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. Thune eventually promised Democrats a December vote on the tax credit extension to help resolve the standoff, but many Democrats demanded a guaranteed fix, not just a vote that is likely to fail. Thune’s position was much the same as the one Schumer took back in October 2013, when Republicans unsuccessfully sought to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act in exchange for funding the government. “Open up all of the government, and then we can have a fruitful discussion,” Schumer said then. Democratic leaders under pressure The first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has seen more than 200,000 federal workers leave their job through firings, forced relocations or the Republican administration’s deferred resignation program, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Whole agencies that don’t align with the administration’s priorities have been dismantled. And billions of dollars previously approved by Congress have been frozen or canceled. Democrats have had to rely on the courts to block some of Trump’s efforts, but they have been unable to do it through legislation. They were also powerless to stop Trump’s big tax cut and immigration crackdown bill that Republicans helped pay for by cutting future spending on safety net programs such as Medicaid and SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The Democrats’ struggles to blunt the Trump administration’s priorities has prompted calls for the party’s congressional leadership to take a more forceful response. Schumer experienced that firsthand after announcing in March that he would support moving ahead with a funding bill for the 2025 budget year. There was a protest at his office, calls from progressives that he be primaried in 2028 and suggestions that the Democratic Party would soon be looking for new leaders. This time around, Schumer demanded that Republicans negotiate with Democrats to get their votes on a spending bill. The Senate rules, he noted, requires bipartisan support to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to advance a spending bill. But those negotiations did not occur, at least not with Schumer. Republicans instead worked with a small group of eight Democrats to tee up a short-term bill to fund the government generally at current levels and accused Schumer of catering to the party’s left flank when he refused to go along. “The Senate Democrats are afraid that the radicals in their party will say that they caved,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at one of his many daily press conferences. The blame game
