Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out a new Democratic counterproposal for ending the government shutdown: attaching a one-year extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies to a spending stopgap that would reopen agencies.
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“This is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with health care affordability and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future,” Schumer said. “Now the ball is in the Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say, ‘Yes.”
The offer generated some quick GOP backlash, however. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) posted on X that it would unduly benefit health insurance companies to blindly extend the subsidies: “Another year of insane profits at the expense of consumers and American taxpayers,” he wrote.
Schumer’s counteroffer came after Democrats met privately for hours Thursday to try to find a path forward that would unify the caucus. It’s a shift from the start of the shutdown, when Democrats included a permanent extension of the Obamacare subsidies in an alternative to the GOP-led continuing resolution that passed the House.
Shortly before Schumer’s speech, a group of roughly a dozen members of the Senate Democratic Caucus — including the No. 2 leader, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois — met in a Capitol basement office. The group included senators who have been negotiating with Republicans about a path out of the shutdown, as well as other Democratic senators viewed as potential swing votes.
A person familiar with the conversation, granted anonymity to describe the private discussion, said that “tone and approach” of the senators in the meeting “doesn’t reflect what you see on the floor.”
Archived at https://archive.is/mSNKC
A lot of people here are interpreting this incorrectly. Guys, this is actually a good strategic move as much as I want Jeffries and Schumer gone.
Follow me:
The GOP are forking Democrats to choose a loss of SNAP benefits, or a loss of healthcare tax subsidies that will see premiums skyrocket to unaffordable levels for millions.
Democrats DO have the negotiating leverage right now considering Trump’s approval is plummeting and more Americans blame Republicans than Democrats.
However, this move has a slightly veiled one: It punts the issue to become a talking-point on healthcare right around midterms next year, which will be hugely beneficial to Democratic talking points.
As a result, Democrats seize a win for the American people in both restoring SNAP benefits and ACA tax subsidies for a year more, while at the same time loading up political leverage for midterms next year.
NOT TO MENTION: It solidifies the side who is trying to viably come to the table and to HELP the American people. Makes them look like the adults in the room.
Dare I say, great move.
I hope so because my entire lifetime of evidence says it’s just more ratchet effect