Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
With America suffering through now over four weeks of a government closure and 11 failed Senate votes, it’s time for a primer on shutdowns.
Q: What is the purpose of the government shutdown?
A: To create leverage for Democrats to force Republicans to share the political blame for the ObamaCare spending disaster.
The shutdown, lest we forget, is fraught with political danger for Democrats. That segment of the public that notices and is bothered by a government shutdown may now figure out who caused it.
Crocodile Tears
Democrats are lucky again that the media hardly notices that the government is closed. Let’s take a moment to watch House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D., Mass.) perform her part. Clark struck the right tone as the righteous lawmaker, heartbroken over her cruel political adversaries who won’t agree to another round of expanded subsidies for ObamaCare.
Not Ready for Prime Time
Rep. Katherine Clarck, mostly sticking to the script, offered this:
I mean, shutdowns are terrible and of course there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have. It is an inflection point in this budget process where we have tried to get the Republicans to meet with us and prioritize the American people and it’s been an absolute refusal. And they were willing to let government shut down when they control the House, the Senate and the White House rather than come and talk about an issue as important to the American people as if they can afford health care…
Amusingly Ironic
What makes Clark’s remarks so awkward is that’s what Democrats had in 2021 when they created the expanded ObamaCare subsidies, and that’s what they still had in 2022 when they extended them and affixed a 2025 expiration date.
“In both the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the even more ludicrously titled Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” writes James Freeman in the WSJ, “Democrats used the budget reconciliation process so that they could pass all of their spending increases without needing Republican votes.”
Democrats, without complete control, opted for the 2025 expiration date, choosing 1) to create this moment and 2) to risk the end of their subsidy scheme.
Democrats insist that they know how important these subsidies are to Americans, which leads one to wonder, do Dems care more about forcing Reps to share the political blame for the fiscal disaster that is ObamaCare than they do about the people receiving ObamaCare subsidies vs the much larger population of people who may be affected by the shutdown?
From James Freeman:
Don’t the many well-heeled ObamaCare subsidy recipients deserve an honest accounting of the way they’re being used by Democrats for the larger cause of helping the party avoid accountability for its catastrophic government expansion?
