Democrats fail to gain concessions during the Schumer Shutdown, highlighting issues with ObamaCare.
So what did the Democrats get out of the Schumer Shutdown? Exactly what we all predicted at its start: bupkis. They may not have even learned the expensive lesson from their utter failure.
Let’s start with the lesson, which — as the gently reminds readers today — has been taught repeatedly over the last 30 years. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats filibustered consideration of a clean CR to force Republicans to make two key concessions. The first was to repeal key Medicaid reforms in their earlier reconciliation bill (the One Big Beautiful Bill) that eliminated funding for coverage of illegal aliens. The second was to force a long-term extension of emergency ObamaCare subsidies created as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which will expire at the end of the year.
Six weeks later, Democrats not only didn’t get either, they didn’t even get a negotiation on either. Democrats accomplished nothing except to add yet another set of data to the lesson that shutdowns don’t actually work as negotiating strategies, Dan Merica and Matthew Choi observe:
Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), a Democrat who opposed the shutdown from the beginning, gave a scathing assessment of how the shutdown went for Democrats: “This was a failure.”
This raises the question: Do shutdowns work?
“No,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), an appropriator who has served in Congress since 1983 and seen every major shutdown of modern times. “I have served in many Congresses where we didn’t shut anything down, where we witnessed the normal process: amendments in committees. We made friends on both sides of the aisle. That’s how you get things done.”
None of the three major (we’re defining “major” as more than 6 days) shutdowns before this year accomplished their central policy goal. The 35-day-long 2018-2019 shutdown stemmed from a dispute between Trump and Democrats on funding for a border wall. Trump never got the full funding, and agreed to reopen the government anyway, leading to rage from his right flank.
Merica and Choi note that Democrats are still trying to spin the inevitable loss as some kind of victory for consciousness-raising:
Most Democrats, particularly in the House, assert that this shutdown at least succeeded in bringing attention to the ballooning costs of health care, even if the bill to open the government did not include extensions to the ACA tax credits.
