WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats don’t seem to have the appetite to force another painful and protracted government shutdown when they’ll have the chance at the end of January, with many arguing the party has already seized the upper hand on health care.
Some Democratic senators believe their party succeeded at shaping the narrative and making the GOP reckon with skyrocketing health insurance premiums for millions of Americans next year, even if they ultimately don’t get an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies they had sought.
“As far as raising national consciousness of the challenge families will face, I think we did our job,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told HuffPost.
Other members of the party, however, still seem reluctant to cut any deal with Republicans without subsidies or meaningful checks on President Donald Trump.
The split is a continuation of divides over the party’s strategy of the last shutdown, and its end in late November when eight Senate Democrats broke with the party and voted to fund the government through January in exchange for a vote on extending the subsidies, which ultimately failed. But the party’s stronger political positioning and the rapidly approaching midterm elections seem to have shrunk many senators’ appetite for risk and given senators who oppose a shutdown the upper hand.
“Whether or not we get a health care deal is going to depend on Republicans’ internal caucus dynamics, not what we do,” added Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a key member of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership team. “We’ve exhausted all the possibilities.”
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said that his party won the messaging war, even if it didn’t succeed at winning the battle over the lapsing ACA subsidies this year.
“Our goal was to extend the premiums so people would keep their health care in 2026,” he said. “We lost that, but fought hard, and the only takeaway is that we’re for health care and they’re not, so on the messaging, it’s pretty clear who’s on who’s side.”
More progressive members, though, don’t want to give up the fight.
“We should keep pushing,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told HuffPost of next month’s funding deadline. “I get it would be really hard in January after people have already signed up for health care, but it’s also going to be really hard for all the people who are going to lose their coverage altogether, or who are not going to be able to manage to pay for groceries and health care at the same time.”
She added: “Every vote is potentially an opportunity to press the Republicans again to help people out on their health care costs.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), meanwhile, said he would not vote for any “continuing resolution or any full-year funding bill unless it has protections against Trump’s corruption and illegality.”
It’s clear Democrats have succeeded in elevating health care to the top of the agenda, with Republicans in total disarray over the issue in the past month. Some moderate GOP lawmakers have sought a short-term extension of the ACA tax credits, while conservatives and Republican leaders oppose Obamacare and would like to see them lapse.
After House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) ruled out a vote to extend the subsidies this month, four moderate members of his caucus broke ranks and joined with Democrats to force one in the coming weeks anyway, in an embarrassing rebuke of the speaker’s leadership, and a testament to the unflinching strategy of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Jeffries refused to endorse narrower GOP proposals extending the tax credits, forcing Republicans to ultimately join him in support for a clean, three-year extension.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been completely checked out of health care talks on Capitol Hill. Polls have repeatedly shown that voter anger about the economy is real, perhaps explaining why Trump chose to deliver a very defensive national address touting his record in the Oval Office on Wednesday, one which showed him facing the same struggle to convince voters their cost-of-living struggles aren’t real as his predecessor did.
Still, many GOP lawmakers and pundits have sounded the alarm about losing their congressional majorities next year due to concerns about affordability, including the cost of health care. Democrats have overperformed in local and special elections across the country since November, including in some red states, raising fears among Republicans about a coming blue wave.
“If you’re not concerned, then you’re living in a cave,” Sen. Jim Justice (R- W.Va.) told HuffPost last week. “If you’re not watching the elections that are happening all the time, then you’re living in a cave.”
Some GOP senators are still holding out hope for a bipartisan deal next month, and a big bipartisan vote in the House could increase pressure on the upper chamber to act.
Still, the chances of another government shutdown aren’t entirely zero. There are many outstanding bicameral disagreements between the parties about appropriations bills for next year, including legislation funding controversial Trump policies dealing with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Health, Labor and Education. The White House has proposed steep cuts in funding to many Democratic priorities, making reaching a bipartisan agreement all the more difficult.
One shift that could actually make it easier for Democrats to shut down the government: They’ll no longer have to worry about funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps low-income individuals and families to buy groceries. The Trump administration’s refusal to fund SNAP during the last shutdown put tremendous pressure on eight Democrats to ultimately fold and vote to reopen the government without getting an extension of ACA subsidies.
But the agreement they struck with the administration funded SNAP until September 2026, paid federal workers who had been on furlough and guaranteed there would be no more reductions in force at federal agencies.
“I have never predicted that there would be a shutdown, particularly after we put the back pay guarantee in,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), one of those eight Democrats, told HuffPost. “And now we’ve not only got back pay guarantee that is being honored by the administration after threatening not to, but we also have put fired workers back and protected them from future [layoffs].”
He added: “Those are things that I think are guardrails against shutdown, but they’re not guarantees against shutdowns.”