The US government shut down at midnight on Wednesday after congress failed to pass a funding bill. The crux of the debate was over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — the Democrats rejected a GOP bill that had passed the House, proposing an alternative bill that would permanently extend the enhanced ACA subsidies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republicans did not vote for the alternative bill, and Democrats blocked a funding bill to reopen the government on Wednesday.
The shutdown is the first since 2019 and the fourth since 2000. The Republicans control 53 Senate seats but their stopgap package needs 60 votes to pass.
Writers the libertarian magazine Reason (Center bias) said, “Health care already consumes the biggest slice of the federal budget, and this shutdown is unlikely to change that—or to reduce the overall size and cost of government. Instead, brace for finger-pointing, silly memes, and yet another bipartisan decision to borrow and spend money that we don't have.”
A Daily Signal (Right) piece said, "During the last government funding fight in March, Democrats tried to weaponize the potential harm done to federal workers against Republicans…Democrats are now downplaying the arguments they’ve previously made about the harm government shutdowns do to federal workers and government operations.”
A New Republic (Left) writer argued, “The Democratic demands to keep the government open were straightforward and reasonable…This shutdown marks the first time that the Democratic Party has thrown itself against the Trump administration in any meaningful way. The Democrats are not whining about rule-breaking or norms. They’re shutting down the government to call attention to a president and a party that are engineering a massive scam to transfer wealth from the poorest people in the country to the richest.”
An opinion in The Blaze (Right)said, “Democrats insist that Biden’s COVID-era expansion of Obamacare subsidies be extended or made permanent. In other words: more debt to prop up a broken system. Just what we need…Instead of regulating and subsidizing the market into insolvency, Republicans should finally offer a bold alternative to the largest sector of the economy and the most expensive line in a household budget.”
A piece in the New Yorker (Left) read, “Various liberal commentators agreed, in the wake of Klein’s essay, that a shutdown was a bad idea for Democrats. And yet, as the deadline loomed, there were also legitimate reasons to temper such defeatism. For starters, several early polls suggested that voters were primed to blame Republicans this time; the Party, after all, controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, and shutdowns do not often happen under such conditions. Although the long-term political consequences of shutdowns have been contested in the past, it’s not really clear that Republicans paid any durable price for those they triggered in 1995 and 2013... If Democrats do wind up getting most of the blame for this shutdown, will anyone really care by the time the midterms roll around, a thousand and one fresh scandals from now? Will anyone even remember?”
