Copyright The Daily Beast
The Senate voted on Monday evening to end the record-long government shutdown despite intense backlash to Democratic senators who caved to reach the deal. The passage of the short-term spending bill to fund the government through January is the latest in several steps toward reopening the government as the shutdown hit Day 41. In return for ending the standoff, Democrats were promised a vote on health care in the Senate. However their push for Congress to extend the expiring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies already appears to be dead on arrival in the House before the bill even goes before the Senate. Democratic congressional candidates across the political spectrum, House members and progressive groups are furious that Democrats agreed to nothing more than a Senate promise and have called for heads. Despite voting “no” on moving the legislation forward, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing calls to step down and for primary challengers. While most of his own caucus has refrained from bashing his leadership outright, the frustration on the hill was on full display as the majority of Senate Democrats voted to continue the fight. Asked point blank whether Schumer should lead Senate Democrats moving forward, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona sidestepped the question on Monday. A petition on Change.org for him to step down hit nearly 50,000 signatures on Monday. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was calling his members back to Washington, D.C. as soon as possible on Monday, so they could vote on the new spending deal for the government to reopen this week. The House has not held a vote since September 19 and has been on recess for seven weeks as Johnson refused to bring them back to town until the Senate took action. The Speaker did not take questions from the press on Monday during his daily news conference about whether he would hold a vote on the health care bill promised to Senate Democrats. Asked if he would even give the Senate health care bill a vote in the House, Johnson remained noncommittal on Monday evening. “We’re going to do in the House what we always do, and that is a deliberative process,” he said. He also threw cold water on Democrats’ push to extend the enhanced Obamacare tax credits to prevent health care costs from skyrocketing at the end of the year during an interview with Fox Business. “Subsidizing the insurance companies is not the answer because it just drives the cost up even further, so we need to look at the root causes,” Johnson said. Republicans have repeatedly claimed they have their own ideas to address the rising cost of health care, but they have yet to make any plan public. The speaker said they have to bring down the cost while also increasing access and quality of care and claimed they had “notebooks full of ideas on how to do that.” However, it’s not just Democrats who have been skeptical. MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has blasted her own party leadership in recent weeks and accused them of not having a plan to tackle the issue. In a separate interview on Monday, Johnson was asked point blank if their plan to address health care would go into effect at the end of the year when costs are set to skyrocket. The speaker gave another vague answer of their ideas and said they have November and December to work on it. Trump famously said during the 2024 presidential debate that he had “concepts of a plan” to address health care but never provided details. He also never released a comprehensive health care plan he promised during the 2020 election after his effort to overturn Obamacare failed during his first term. The president has refused to negotiate with Democrats throughout the entire 40+ days of the shutdown so far. On Monday while speaking in the Oval Office, the president praised the deal reached in the Senate as “very good.” “We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies, and I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time where the people get the money,” he declared. While House Democrats remain largely united against the Senate plan, they do not have the votes to block it, should House Republicans remain united. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed Republicans on health care during his own press conference on Monday and vowed to keep fighting. “We’re going to continue the fight to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, and if it doesn’t happen this week, next week, this month, next month, then it’s the fault of Donald Trump and House and Senate Republicans,” he said. If the tax credits expire, out-of-pocket premiums are estimated to increase by 114 percent on average next year, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). A whopping 74 percent of Americans support the enhanced ACA subsidies being extended including 76 percent of Independents and 50 percent of Republicans, according to KFF’s poll.
