For the first time in more than 40 years, Republicans in the US Senate refused to compromise with the Democrat Party’s demands. Amazing! Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) vanity shutdown ended with a whimper on Sunday night. Democrats got nothing of any substance after eight Democrats crossed the aisle to join Republicans in ending the shutdown. That’s great news, but the massive expansion of Obamacare subsidies that happened last year under Joe Biden is still threatening to blow up the entire economy.
42 Republicans and eight Democrats voted on a procedural move to allow a Continuing Resolution (CR) to advance. The CR will fund agriculture (food stamps/SNAP), military construction-Veterans Affairs, and the legislative branch through January 30th. Federal employees will get their back pay that Chuck Schumer denied them for 40 days.
The Office of Management and Budget laid off 4,000 federal employees during the shutdown. One of the only slight concessions that the Democrats received in this deal was that those employees have to be hired back. The other 250,000 federal employees who Trump fired earlier this year are still fired. The deal will also prevent Trump from firing any other employees through January 30th. (The firing spree can resume on January 31!)
Democrats got nothing, in other words. After 40 days of shutting down the government and—let’s be honest—screwing their base out of food stamps for a few days—they got nothing in return. Expect a retirement announcement from Chuck Schumer before Christmas.
Senate Republicans agreed to allow Democrats a vote on the Obamacare bill of their choice before the second week of December. They want to keep the money spigot running for all the illegal aliens on Medicaid. Everyone knows that even if the Democrats’ eventual proposal passes, it won’t make it through the House. It’s DOA.
This is all great news, but it still leaves the Obamacare problem out there. Joe Biden massively expanded the Obamacare subsidies during COVID. The challenge before the Republican-led Congress now is how to end those subsidies without blowing up the economy?
Steve Bannon has talked about this a lot. Much of MAGA is on Obamacare now, because there are no good jobs. President Trump has secured a lot of deals with foreign countries to invest in new jobs in the US, but those are still years away. Obamacare is the only option that Americans have for health insurance.
A Silver plan for my household would cost $62,400 for 2026. A crappy Bronze plan with a $15,000 deductible for every person would run us around $36,000. In other words, we haven’t had health insurance in my household in years. Pre-Obamacare, our annual insurance was around $3,500 a year.
For the people who qualify for subsidized plans, the Biden-era Obamacare expansion was great. Lots of MAGA voters suddenly qualified for subsidized health care, and it was great while it lasted. But the Biden regime signed 10 million illegal aliens up for Obamacare (fact), and it is now unsustainable.
President Trump threw a bunker buster solution into the Obamacare debate over the weekend.
Why not have Congress just give all that subsidized money to families, scrap Obamacare, and let people find health insurance plans that work for them?
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” he wrote on Truth Social.
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In the same message, President Trump called on Senate Republicans to ditch the filibuster. The Democrats already tried to abolish the filibuster the last time they were in power. Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked that effort, but they’re gone now. The next time they’re in power, they’ll nuke it. Republicans may as well pull the trigger now so they can implement President Trump’s bold vision to save the country and Make America Great Again.
The Democrats did get one small victory out of Schumer’s vanity shutdown. They slowed down President Trump’s momentum for 40 days. Abolishing the filibuster will prevent them from doing it again.