Crunch time: Democrats ready for shutdown standoff over Republican health cuts

It has been nine brutal months for congressional Democrats.

Relegated by voters to the minority in last year’s election, they have been powerless to stop Republicans from acting on Donald Trump’s demands to fund an immigration crackdown, strip money for foreign aid and public media, and downsize Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans.

That is set to change next week. Funding for the government expires on Tuesday, but Democrats have refused the GOP’s demands to support legislation keeping it open unless the majority agrees to reverse the Medicaid cuts, restore funding to public media and extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans.

The ultimatum sets up a standoff next week that could result in the federal government shutting down for the first time in six years – a prospect that the White House has vowed to make uniquely painful, by announcing plans to lay off employees of any federal agency it deems non-essential.

The party remain undaunted, believing they have found rare leverage over the administration by making a stand on the issue of healthcare, which proved effective at rallying voters to their side during Trump’s first term and could do so again ahead of next year’s pivotal midterm elections.

“Democrats are not going to go along to get along. Our position is clear: cancel the cuts, lower the costs, save healthcare,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol on Friday.

Republicans are insisting that Democrats agree to support a bill – approved by the House of Representatives on a near party-line vote last week – that will keep the government funded through 21 November, without making any major changes to policies, besides authorizing more security funds in response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

They have accused Democrats of hypocrisy, saying that such a measure, known as a clean continuing resolution (CR), has been acceptable to them in the past.

“Now that Republicans are offering a clean CR, it’s somehow a no-go,” Senate majority leader John Thune said last week. “Why is it always a special case with Democrats? The truth is, the only thing special about this case is that Democrats can’t stand the fact that the American people elected Donald Trump. So we all have to live with their endless temper tantrum – which apparently may now include shutting down the government.”

Lawmakers will be in a crunch beginning Monday, when they return to Washington after a week-long break in which little progress appears to have been made. House Republican leaders have cancelled plans for the chamber to resume work in a bid to pressure Democratic senators to support the CR, but House Democrats have announced plans to be in the capital anyway.

Jeffries and the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, attempted to meet Trump this week, but the president ultimately turned them down, saying: “No meeting with their congressional leaders could possibly be productive.” On Saturday, the top Democrats announced Trump had again agreed to a meeting.

Democrats across the ideological spectrum have shown no sign of caving to the GOP’s demands, in part because the relationship between the two parties has become increasingly tattered since Trump returned to the White House.

A key factor in that was the rescissions package Republicans approved in July that slashed foreign aid programs and public media – which Congress had previously approved on a bipartisan basis. Cutting that funding “did a lot of harm to the trust that you need to negotiate in good faith”, said Brad Schneider, chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, the largest ideological caucus in the House.

“The Republicans have done nothing to give the country confidence that what’s agreed to in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans is what the executive branch is actually going to do,” he said.

The party believes they have found the right issues at the right time to throw down the gauntlet. The tax-and-spending bill Republicans passed earlier this year is estimated to cost 10 million people their health insurance through changes to Medicaid and the ACA.

Subsidies for health insurance under the ACA, which Democrats created under Biden, run out at the end of the year, and if not extended will cause costs to rise for more than 20 million enrollees.

“Premiums are spiking. Nobody can afford health care in the richest country in the world,” said Pramila Jayapal, a Washington congresswoman and former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “They actually need Democratic votes in the Senate, not in the House necessarily, but in the Senate. And I think we’ve got to be willing to say, if you want Democratic votes, then you’ve got to do some things that we want. Otherwise, why would we give you our votes?”

Any spending legislation will need at least some Democratic support to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the upper chamber. Last March, Schumer angered some in the party’s base by urging his lawmakers to support a Republican funding bill, arguing that a shutdown would be “devastating” in the midst of the department of government’s efficiency’s campaign of thinning the federal workforce.

This time around, he appears on board with holding firm.

“The bottom line is the … overwhelming majority of Democrats, both House and Senate, are united on the fact that healthcare is a mess and we have to fix it,” Schumer said in an interview on PBS. “It’s sort of a universal feeling that what they’re doing is totally, totally derelict. And if there is a shutdown, it’s going to be a Trump shutdown on their shoulders.”

It’s welcome news for the activist groups who rally voters. Indivisible’s national advocacy director Andrew O’Neill has credited Senate Democrats with “fighting smart” by sticking to their healthcare demands, and MoveOn spokesperson Joel Payne said his members “are encouraged that Democrats are so far holding the line”.

“Because of the depressed nature of the Democratic coalition right now, they need to be doing everything that they can do to inspire confidence and to inspire engagement from their base, for a lot of reasons,” he told the Guardian.

Re-energizing voters ahead of next year’s midterm elections, where Democrats believe they have a good chance of seizing back the House and winnowing the Republican majority in the Senate, is one of those reasons. Another is to communicate that they understand the extent to which Trump has changed the GOP from what it was prior to his rise.

“To the extent that Democrats want to hold the confidence of their base, I think they need to also signal that they see that evolution as well,” Payne said.