So there’s a Senate deal to end the filibuster. The reaction to this from the Dem side of the political spectrum ranges from red-hot furious to meh, it’s not so bad. It could have been worse.
Steve Benen explains where we are right now.
Is the shutdown over?
Not yet. The Sunday-night vote in the Senate was a procedural vote to advance a bill intended to end the shutdown. It received 60 votes, but the underlying legislation still needs to pass.
Who caved?
In addition to Cortez Masto, Fetterman and King, who’ve consistently voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, five other Senate Democrats sided with the GOP on the procedural vote: Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jackie Rosen of Nevada and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. (Durbin and Shaheen, it’s worth noting for context, are retiring at the end of their current terms.) Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, meanwhile, voted with most Democrats against the package.
Did they get anything in exchange for their votes?
Not much. The deal, to the extent that it can fairly be described as such, includes three full-year appropriations bills to fund some federal departments through the end of the fiscal year and money to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It also reverses Donald Trump’s shutdown layoffs (also known as “reduction in force” notifications, or RIFs).
Republicans promised Dems a vote on extending the expiring ACA subsidies. When? Soon. And then Charlie Brown will get to kick the football. Speaker Johnson has signaled his support for the deal, so if the Senate passes it the House surely will also.
Here is Josh Marshall’s positive spin:
There was a legitimate party rebellion after the March debacle. Democratic voters demanded fight. When the time came, Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days, the longest shutdown standoff in history. They put health care at the center of the national political conversation and inflicted a lot of damage on Trump. At 40 days they could no longer hold their caucus together. And we got this.
That’s a sea change in how the party functions in Congress. And that’s a big deal. Many people see it as some kind of epic disaster and are making all the standard threats about not voting or not contributing or whatever. That’s just not what I see. It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet.
That may not be much consociation — yes, they’re lame, but maybe they’re not as lame as they used to be — but I’m taking it for now. Staying angry is too exhausting.
Also, soo.
The December vote on Obamacare funding is basically a fake one. But it will show yet again how absolutely determined Republicans are to make people’s health care costs go through the roof. The upshot of the shutdown is that Democrats now own the affordability issue, and they’ve focused it on health care coverage, which Republicans want to make more expensive or take away altogether. That vote keeps it there. So will the huge price hikes millions will be feeling by December. Also, if I’m understanding the deal right this continuing resolution goes through January. So there’s another bite of the apple in just a couple of months.
The fact that a lot of today’s angry commentaries are blaming Chuck Schumer doesn’t bother me much, either. Chuck is up for re-election in 2028. But even if he gets another term, maybe he’ll lose his leadership position. We can hope.
Meanwhile, Trump for some reason has felt emboldened to call for repealing Obamacare entirely. I doubt most Senate Republicans want to go down that road again, especially not right now. But Trump posted this …
…thereby hanging a big sign on himself that says I DON’T KNOW HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. But a group of senators immediately jumped in and proposed legislation to simply give the insurance subsidies to the people.
“I’m writing the bill right now,” [Sen. Rick] Scott posted in a response to Trump’s suggestion. “We must stop taxpayer money from going to insurance companies and instead give it directly to Americans in HSA-style accounts and let them buy the health care they want. This will increase competition & drive down costs.”
Here in Real World Land, most medical care providers wo4n’t accept you as a patient if you don’t have proof of insurance. And that was true long before there was Obamacare. And Rick Scott, of all people, should know that.
… he co-founded Columbia Hospital Corporation. Columbia later merged with another corporation to form Columbia/HCA, which eventually became the nation’s largest for-profit health care company. Scott was pressured to resign as chief executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997. During his tenure as chief executive, the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs. The U.S. Department of Justice won 14 felony convictions against the company, which was fined $1.7 billion in what was at the time the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history. Following his departure from Columbia/HCA, Scott became a venture capitalist and pursued other business interests.
Scott also knows that the relatively piddly amount of money most people could accumulate in an HSA, even with subsidies, wouldn’t begin to touch the cost of cancer treatments or surgery or childbirth or any number of real-world medical problems people have all the time. But I don’t think Scott’s bill has a prayer to pass without killing the filibuster — possibly not even then — and I’m sure he knows that, too.
On a happier note, the Supreme Court rejected an opportunity to oveturn its earlier decision on same-sex married.
The shutdown was a really stupid idea to begin with. All shutting down the federal government does is hurt working class people and cause chaos. The GOP could care less about shutting down the government so there was absolutely no chance that they were going to deal anyway. It seems to me Chuck convinced his side to vote for shutdown just because he got so much shit the last time he did the right thing and kept the government open. Once all the people see what diaper don has done to their ACA premiums maybe that will pressure the tea-tards into action but shutting down the government was never going to accomplish saving the subsidies. That being said Chuck needs to go, he has been a horrible leader from day one, it's time for someone else!
I just posted a comment on the last heading which better fits here. As to health savings accounts, we all know that is a rich person's solution to a poor person's problem. The numbers are bad for average household credit debt as it is. The average household has negative savings and a large amount of them. This eats up any "extra money" they might have to save by being already spent and with interest costs. It is a non-solution solution for those that really need a solution if someone gets to health battle two.
The best solution is to win health battle one.
The prior post explains what I am saying so I will re-run it here:
There are two battles with health care. Two ways to lose. I've survived both by the skin of my teeth so far.
Battle one is how to stay healthy. This one is a little easier than the other one because you are in a healthy state when you are doing it or might be. A lot of healthy people did not survive the covid because their personal circle of health "professionals" failed them. Professional is in quotations because it has a number of definitions. Many profess to know and act like they know but know only misinformation that will rob your time and resources. Some are loosely attached to the health business selling diet books, diet foods, supplements and the like. Some actually have credentials and dabble in the same fringe areas of health but can also provide some restricted services which require certification and professional level training and skill or assist those who do. All who battle to stay healthy will encounter a lot of these "professionals" without knowing the ones to avoid. This is difficult and risky. Here at least you are in the better position to make sensible decisions. Be thankful you are not in a state of failing health. Making sensible decisions then gets more complicated and way riskier. If things are bad your judgement may not be there at all, and that will add to the risk.
Once upon a time, if you got into battle two, you had national politics on your side. Now you don't. We substituted national health care with the careless alternative. Best to have a dependable and capable illness care team set up for that battle. Without one you have little hope if you get in the wrong hands. The best plan for most is to win battle one and stay healthy. At some point you may get to the place I am. Too old to die young. Good Luck.
I guess we get a vote before we go into careless alternative health care sub-standard standards, for a bill with a snowballs chance in hell of survival and passage.
White males got us there, the ones with decreasing life expectancy in this country. It came with a large push for white male supremacy and a macho level death wish. Both, I contend, show failure in health battle one. These are both way of decreasing one's life expectancy and certainly the quality of life you get along the way.
Remember at all times, if common sense was real more people would have it. Doubt all "common sense" solutions. Remember also all solutions in the long term are temporary at best. This one looks really temporary.
If anyone "knows" by evidence or testimony that the GOP was about to cave, I sure never heard it. IMO, Trump was sold on the elimination of subsidies as the stake he could drive through the heart of Obamacare. After being thwarted by McCain, I think Trump's lust for vengeance against the signature accomplishment of his nemesis is a Trump obsession. He would have brought the whole country to ruin before he funded Obamacare. This was and is my concern – that we limit the damage Trump will do. The shutdown was doing real damage to Americans while it was also doing damage to Trump but (totally a subjective evaluation) continuing the shutdown would have done more damage to Americans than it would to Trump.
The shutdown was a billboard and (up to a point) the longer the shutdown went on, the larger the billboard was. We broke the previous record for the shutdown – no one can call the shutdown symbolic.. But we were not going to get subsidies for low-income Americans. The "billboard" tells anyone who will read it, that ending the subsidies WILL directly cause millions to lose access to health care. It's statistically certain that Americans will die who would have otherwise lived between now and the midterms.
I try hard not to state as fact things that are only predictions. But Project 2025 has a narrative to counter the "fake news" stories about real people who will have a recent marker at their grave instead of a life with their families. They will deny that millions are losing healthcare, or that it's their "choice" not to come up with thousands of dollars for insurance premium increases. Trump has tipped his hand early – blame the premium increases on the insurance companies, not Project 2025.
My point is: the prepared narrative will fail with voters because the billboard will still be up next year. We told you what was going to happen and WHY! We tried desperately to preserve the subsidies to save your lives. Now, faced with the truth, you know who is at fault. When they tell you that if you are poor, you probably deserve to die, you can answer in the midterm election. Their timing and message could not be worse.
(I said it before, but I will repeat it – the GOP passed on the best strategic option. They could have extended the subsidies for a year and maybe saved the midterm election. IMO, no amount of gerrymandering will save them now.)
Historians will tell you, the Confederates did not have to commit to Gettysburg. The loss cost them the war. Only Trump believed in tariffs. The damage will be in full display next year in job losses and inflation. The GOP had the luxury of killing off health care later, or seeing the land mine, they could have avoided an issue that Americans will respond to. MAGA put a fool in charge – the crash will happen, is happening. Nobody can step in while Trump lives to reverse the self-destructive path they are on. We the People have to keep up the resistance and try to limit collateral damage. But the Trump machine will eat itself.