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This is what Democrats have been talking about for a few months now and why they won't provide the votes. BRANGHAM: These are the subsidies for Obamacare that will now go through the roof. CAPEHART: Right. Right. And so that's why they're not providing the votes for — to reopen the government. The other thing, the other date that we should pay attention to is the elections on Tuesday. These will be, whether we like it or not, bellwether. And I suspect that, depending on the outcome on Tuesday, we could see some shifting, people getting together, talking and coming to some resolution over the shutdown. But the other thing that's hanging out there that people forget, it's not just the subsidies that Democrats have a problem with. It is also that the whole thing of rescissions and that they could come to some — any kind of agreement. BRANGHAM: This is the Trump administration saying — basically taking Congress's spending authority away— CAPEHART: Right. BRANGHAM: — saying, “I know you appropriated this money. It's coming back.” CAPEHART: Right, exactly. “We don't care what you decided, what you authorize. We will do — we will spend the money the way we want to spend it, or we won't spend it at all.” And so if you're a Democrat and you are a part of some gang, I don't know if they still do gangs like they used to in the past, but even if they provide the votes and they come to some agreement, the president and Russell Vought, the OMB director, could just step out there and say, we don't care what you think. So I don't think — all the way back to your original part of the question, I do not think the two judges, their ruling takes any pressure off Democrats. If anything, as we get beyond tomorrow and certainly beyond the elections on Tuesday, I think pressure could grow on Republicans, the Republican leaders, particularly Senator Thune, Majority Leader Thune, to come up — let's come up with something so we can get the government reopened. BRANGHAM: David, do you think that the Democrats are making a coherent, resonant argument as to why they are holding the line here? DAVID BROOKS: I think it's okay. I mean, they're emphasizing the subsidies. Frankly, if it was up to me. I might have mentioned a once-in-a-nation's-history threat to democracy as the core problem here. But they're making coherent case on the health subsidies. I think it's not the legitimate case that should be made at this moment in American history. BRANGHAM: Do you think if they had pivoted, though, to that argument to say, we will not fund what they argue is an unlawful administration, that that would be more resonant? BROOKS: I don't know. Clearly, their pollsters said nobody cares about democracy, because they would be making that case. The pollsters said, “we're good on health care.” And if you look at the issue list, which party do you trust on which issue, Republicans tend to have advantage to almost every issue except for health care. So they picked the one issue. You know, I think we're at the glide path down toward a government reopening. And I say that because last time this happened at this length in 2018, it's when the air traffic controllers began to not show up at work. BRANGHAM: Right. BROOKS: It's — when the benefits began to really get cut and people began to feel it, then they reopened the government. And I don't know which way they will go, like, who — how they will cut some sort of deal. But you got SNAP. You got the — as we saw earlier, the Head Start. There's just a lot of things where people are really beginning to feel it. And so I think they will begin. I just — before, if — hopefully the next time we meet, though, the government will be open. But we should not be running government by shutdown. You should go to the voters. If you want a policy change, go to the voters. Don't shut down the government. And, frankly, somebody should ask the Democrats, why did you schedule the subsidies to expire a year before an election? Why didn't you just make the subsidies forever? BRANGHAM: Right. BROOKS: And the reason they didn't want to do that is because they wanted to hide the cost, because what the Democrats are proposing would increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. But we should — I'm upset that not everybody's upset. Like, so — our democracy is deteriorating to such a degree, there should be howling outrage that, why are you shutting down the government? Why are we hurting SNAP moms, food stamps, the poorest people among us? And there should be more outrage about that.
