Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Monday the government shutdown is on its way to being one of the longest in history unless Democrats accept the House-passed, GOP-crafted stopgap bill to reopen the government.
“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history, unless Democrats dropped their partisan demands and passed a clean, no-strings-attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers,” Johnson said in a press conference on the 13th day of the government shutdown.
Congressional leaders have been locked in a standoff over government funding as Democrats demand that Republicans make concessions on health care, notably Affordable Care Act tax credits that are expiring at the end of the year. Republican leaders have refused to negotiate on health care during a shutdown, arguing that that Democrats must accept the “clean” funding stopgap the House passed in September — and which has failed to advance in the Senate seven times.
This is already an aspect of the ACA, and that’s imo the big problem with it. Of course my perfect version of a healthcare bill would be single payer Medicare for all where we’re just taxed appropriately to cover universal healthcare, but that’s not on the table for some fucking reason. The right wants everybody without money to just die and gatekeep healthcare to keep it for the wealthy only. The half measure compromise (ACA) was to keep healthcare costs low, especially if you have less income, but you pay a fine if you declined to pay for that coverage, so you may as well pay that money to a health insurance company and have health insurance instead; get something for that money. This raised the number of people with health insurance, but largely through extortion. The good outweighs the bad, but it is indirectly a subsidy to insurance companies to keep the industry afloat despite being a shitty value.