The liberal-leaning Washington Post editorial board chastised Senate Democrats on Thursday for holding the federal government “hostage” for a month, urging them to vote for a House-backed stopgap funding bill to end the shutdown.
Most Senate Democrats have voted 13 times against passing a clean continuing resolution that would continue funding through Nov. 21. They have demanded that Republicans negotiate on extending Affordable Care Act tax subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said earlier this month he offered Democrats a vote on extending ACA subsidies if they agreed to end the shutdown.
“Keeping the government open should be separated from policy disputes about how to spend taxpayer money,” the editorial stated. “It is wrong that Democrats have held the government hostage for a month in hopes of extending costly Obamacare subsidies, just as it was for Sen. Ted Cruz [R-Texas] to shut down the government in 2013 for 16 days in a bid to defund the Affordable Care Act altogether.”
The editorial said a reason the shutdown has dragged on for so long is that “most Americans have felt no discernible impact on their daily life.” But it warned, “That’s starting to change.” It noted that this weekend, benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will stop being distributed, affecting roughly 40 million people.
“This pain point, combined with three other dynamics, should help hasten an end to the shutdown as early as next week by making Democrats blink,” the editorial stated.
The three dynamics include the start of the open enrollment period for purchasing health insurance through the ACA network, which begins Saturday, when “many people will experience sticker shock when they see how much their premiums are about to go up.” The editorial said Democrats will be able to claim they made their point about the need to rescue Obamacare by extending subsidies that are set to expire.
The second factor is the expected success of Democrats in next week’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City, which would allow party leaders to “save face by claiming that the people sent a loud message to President Donald Trump.”
The third is that federal public employee unions, a core Democrat constituency, are losing patience. Everett Kelley, president of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, called on the Senate on Monday to pass a clean CR to end the shutdown.
The Post accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of allowing the shutdown to drag on because he’s worried about fending off a primary challenger in 2028, and said he is still affected by the blowback from “angry liberals” after he agreed to a CR in March.
“Unions, the Washington Post, and federal workers are all calling for Chuck Schumer to do what is right and open up the government,” the Senate Republican Conference wrote Thursday on X. “It’s time he listened to the American people and not his political strategists.”
The calendar could help induce a deal by Nov. 7, as both chambers are scheduled for a recess for Veterans Day.
“The right answer is to reopen the government with a clean funding bill, ideally for a full year, to get food stamps flowing and federal workers back in the office, and then have a debate about ACA subsidies,” the editorial stated. “Democrats openly acknowledge that they refuse to do this because it would mean giving up their leverage. If they persist, it could mean families start to go hungry.”
Newsmax reached out to Schumer’s office for comment.
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