Government shutdowns are a failure of leadership. There’s really no excuse for them. I suppose that many readers can stop now. You know where I’m headed with this particular commentary. We are almost a month into an impasse in the US Senate that cannot get 60 votes to proceed to a vote on a continuing resolution sent to them weeks ago by the House of Representatives. That CR, as it’s referred to, keeps the government open until Congress passes its 12 appropriations bills to fund the government for the following year.
What’s mindboggling to me is that the CR merely keeps the lights on. It doesn’t change the funding levels of the most recent budget, except for authorizing more security measures for sitting legislators. However, Democrats in the Senate—with the support of their colleagues in the House—are insistent on including in the CR a provision that would retain COVID-era spending supplements to offset rising Obamacare premiums. Republicans do not want to include those supplements in the CR, citing an early bill that ended them on 1 January 2026, an expiration date that Democrats supported when they were in charge during the Biden years.
However, now Democrats have decided they want to sustain the COVID provision, even after the pandemic is no more. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program.” This is the hill that Democrats have chosen to die on.
To be sure, healthcare costs are rising. But that is primarily a function of how Obamacare was structured in the first place, especially after Medicaid—a program for the needy—was expanded to include the able-bodied, setting Obamacare costs on an upward spiral that has seen premiums explode. And while there are other cost factors like the price of drugs, inflation, and associated costs, the smallest piece of that is, ironically, the COVID supplement. Indeed, an analysis by the Paragon Health Institute suggests the impact of the expiring subsidies is minimal compared to other factors, accounting for only 3.3% of the total projected 2026 premium for a representative average enrollee. The sharp jump in premiums is overwhelmingly due to different factors, not the expiration of the enhanced subsidies.
According to the analysis, the primary culprits for the surge in premiums are due to the poor nature of Obamacare since 2014. This includes higher medical utilization, inflation, health care consolidation stimulated by Obamacare, the cost of expensive and specialty drugs (notably GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes medications), and biologic drugs or vaccines made from a living organism.
The persistent issue Democrats face is not resolved by retaining the COVID assistance. The underlying cost structure of Obamacare was sold to Americans as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In fact, that turned out to be a boldface lie. Sadly, closing the government does not move the needle when it comes to reforming this miserably bad program that has upended the costs of healthcare for all Americans. It must be fixed, but nothing will happen until the government is reopened.
You might be wondering, “Why can’t Democrats see this?” Actually, they do see it but have decided that their intransigence, even if that causes unnecessary pain to government workers, is a price worth paying to show their far-left supporters that they are “resisting Trump.” It is a cynical ploy that will produce no real reform of healthcare. In the meantime, government workers will suffer. The irony is that many of them support Democrat policies, revealing how far Democrats will go in their “my way or the highway” style of governance. Indeed, they seem to have forgotten that they lost demonstrably in 2024. And as President Obama was fond of saying, “elections have consequences.”
It’s time to end this nonsense. When I was a legislator, budget disagreements sometimes led to extended delays and griping from both sides of the political aisle. The debates often seemed intractable. But the Virginia General Assembly always found a way to balance a budget so that shutdowns were avoided. Both sides eventually resolved to do their jobs, even if it took more time than necessary. As others and I were fond of saying, “Have your debate. Make it fulsome but then shut up and vote.”
Senate Democrats and their cheering sections devoted to pouting and thumb-sucking over the 2024 elections have decided that government closures are nothing to avoid, despite their uniform opposition to such when they controlled Congress.
Democrats have elected to take their ball and run home, leaving government workers, air traffic controllers, the military, and other critical functions unfunded, which is their idea of good government. It’s a failure of leadership, which is why they were defenestrated in the last election and likely will be again. It’s truly time to shut up and vote.
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