Democrats Own the Longest Shutdown in History
Government Shutdown Post-Mortem
Democrats triggered the record 40-day government shutdown by refusing to pass a clean Continuing Resolution (CR) unless Republicans approved $200 billion in new, fully unpaid-for Obamacare premium subsidies. House Republicans offered a straightforward CR that maintained current spending with no extras. But Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, rejected it and demanded a one-year extension of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits expiring December 31, 2025—without offsets, spending cuts, or any way to pay for it, effectively adding a blank check to must-pass funding legislation.
The enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies Democrats tried to staple onto the CR were never meant to be permanent. Congress created them in 2021 as a temporary COVID measure, deliberately removing income caps so even upper-middle-class households could get taxpayer help. That made sense when unemployment spiked and incomes crashed, but the economy has long since recovered. Keeping a wartime-style expansion in place forever now subsidizes coverage for millions of people who can plainly afford it on their own, while doing nothing to encourage smarter, lower-cost options like expanded Health Savings Accounts or high-deductible plans that actually control premiums. Even if someone believes more Americans need subsidy help today (a necessary debate for another day), resurrecting this specific 2021–2022 framework is the wrong tool. A clean continuing resolution does one job: keep the government open at current levels. Everything else—good ideas, bad ideas, or in-between—belongs in regular order, not as a ransom demand.
Bottom line: attaching unrelated, unfunded health-care spending to a routine funding bill is textbook bureaucratic hostage-taking. Republicans added nothing to their clean CR; Democrats demanded everything and shut the government down when they didn’t get it. The subsidies can and should be debated in regular order next month, but closing down the government as leverage was 100 % a Democratic decision—and the longest shutdown in American history is the direct result.