The shutdown is winding down as eight Senate Democrats (seven Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with Democrats) voted with Republicans to reach the 60 votes needed to reopen the government. The ensuing spending plan, however, will not include the health coverage subsidies for which the Democrats were holding out.
There is a lot of legitimate anger at the so-called “defectors.” If you were going to cave, why wait until day 40? With public opinion leaning your way, why let up? Especially when this is the only leverage you’ve got? And how can you shake hands with these thoroughly untrustworthy Republicans, who have blatantly and illegally ignored previous spending allocations? All for the promise of a show vote on the health-coverage tax credits next month—a vote that will almost surely fail?
Furthermore, some of what the moderate Democrats claim they “got” in the deal are not at all Republican concessions. Specifically, rehiring government workers illegally laid off during the shutdown and “fully funding SNAP” are simply acts of requiring the other side to obey the law. While getting Republicans to follow existing laws may look like a win these days, it is not a genuine concession.
Still, there are several compelling arguments that point the other way, though only if the fight we saw during the shutdown over who’s fighting for whom continues to rage. If these moderates don’t work with the rest of the Democratic caucus to build on the political and messaging gains made during the shutdown, then they really are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
The main argument for ending the shutdown was that Democrats were not going to get the tax credits, and too many people were feeling the brunt of the shutdown. The former is probably true; the latter is definitely true. The group of people affected by the shutdown grew with each week, extending beyond the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who had not been paid for weeks.
The Trump administration’s legal fight to avoid paying SNAP food assistance benefits put tens of millions of Americans at risk of going hungry. Its decision to ratchet back air traffic capacity ensnared millions of others in travel disruptions and flight cancellations that began over the weekend.
Given that these two facts—probable loss on tax credits and spreading pain—were highly predictable from the start, why shut down at all?
For one, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer understood that the party was itching for a fight with what is, hands down, the worst, most spineless GOP Senate caucus of our lifetimes. On a daily basis, they bow before their corrupt leader and violate their vows to protect the Constitution. Granted the leverage that the shutdown gave them, Senate Democrats had to pitch a fight. And they pitched a uniquely strong one.
They made the Republicans own the highly potent health-care (un)affordability issue, and they’ll get another chance to elevate that issue next month when Republicans continue to stand by while over 20 million people see their premiums spike.
My sense—backed by some polling evidence, with the most important polls being last Tuesday’s mini blue wave—is that a very important sentiment is clarifying among voters: the Trump administration doesn’t care a whit about their economic concerns, but the Democrats do.
I grant you, that last bit—“the Democrats do”—is an uphill battle and is just now maybe coming into focus. The shutdown underscored that for Republicans, unaffordability and cruelty are spectator sports. This leaves Democrats as the only party in the game.
No question, the Democratic Party has suffered from years, if not decades, of being perceived as abandoning working-class economics—in many cases, justly so. But during the shutdown, they were clearly the party fighting for affordable health care, for SNAP, for government workers, while the Republicans weaponized the moment to push hard in the wrong direction on each of these issues.
This is the fight that Democrats won in the shutdown, even if they lost on the tax credits. But if they stop here, they’re toast—and deservedly so.
I could be wrong; maybe this time is different—but in a few months, most regular folks won’t remember the shutdown. These events have historically had a very short half-life.
But if Democrats start here, if they learn from this shutdown that they can unify around the message of affordability, competent governance that follows the rule of law, and elevating the pain that this administration—backed by a do-nothing, wholly compliant Congressional majority—is inflicting on large swaths of Americans on a daily basis, then the shutdown will have been worth it.
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*Jared Bernstein is a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden. He is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.*
*Please consider subscribing to his Substack.*
https://www.nationalmemo.com/when-will-government-shutdown-end
