Editorial written by The Seattle Times Editorial Board
The longest government shutdown in history is over following Sunday’s “Senate surrender,” as described by U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Tacoma. Seven Democrats and one independent voted with Republicans to advance the Senate’s short-term funding bill. The Tacoma Democrat piled onto a heap of intraparty condemnation, saying those senators “got played” and “lost their nerves” as the shutdown wore on.
Yes, Democrats failed to win an extension for health care subsidies that was their rallying cry for shuttering the federal government. But Republicans were unlikely to ever cave to those demands anyway, while the Trump administration moved aggressively to withhold food assistance benefits 42 million Americans rely upon.
Here’s where the Democrats were successful. They used their limited leverage, as the minority party, to shine the brightest spotlight possible on the plight of rising costs for everyday Americans. Bringing the fight for expiring health care subsidies front and center, they exposed President Donald Trump and the Republicans as “the party who pushed millions of Americans off the health care cliff,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Without those subsidies, millions of Americans will face substantially higher health care costs Jan. 1. Annual premiums for those enrolled in the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace are expected to triple — going up an average of $12,590 in Washington state, according to an analysis by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office.
A recent KFF poll showed nearly three in four Americans back extending those health care tax credits — and of those who support them, another 75% say they’ll blame Republicans for their lapse.
The shutdown also exposed limits on Trump’s executive power and sway he holds over the Republican Party. Senate Republicans declined to follow his suggestion to end the 60-vote filibuster. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who set his own precedent by shutting down his chamber for about two months, also faced members of his own party who decried that protracted closure.
In exchange for ending the shutdown, Democrats will get a Senate vote, though not a guaranteed outcome, on the health care subsidies — and another chance to show Republican leaders are the reason those subsidies are ending. They also pushed through food assistance benefits for a full year and a reversal of the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal employees during the shutdown.
Democrats also won big election victories around the country earlier this month, including the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey. The women soon to lead those two states, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and current U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, campaigned on a platform to lower costs for struggling Americans.
Keep the momentum going.
If the Democratic Party is to come back to power in Washington, D.C., it must stay focused on affordability. The shutdown showed it to be the Republicans’ Achilles’ heel — and the truest path back to power for Democrats.
