The Democrats were furious Monday over eight senators who caved to support a deal to end the government shutdown that does not include the Affordable Care Act subsidies their party had spent weeks fighting for.
The offending lawmakers include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and independent Senator Angus King, who claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits. Their capitulation comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted for weeks that he wouldn’t promise them a vote on anything, and even if he does follow through with a vote, it’s unlikely such a measure will pass the House.
Democratic lawmakers slammed their colleagues for forfeiting health care coverage for an estimated 5.1 million Americans by 2034 and increasing premiums across the marketplace.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against the deal while speaking before the Senate Sunday. “If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are gonna see at least a doubling in their premiums in the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for health care. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?”
“We ensured a vote!”
Bullshit. Even if the vote happens, it won’t pass, and even if it did, Trump could veto it. This was the one chance to save the ACA and also to really damage Trumpism. The shutdown was devastating to the GOP and the Dems would have won eventually just like in 2019, but instead these 8 traitors are handing the country over when they’ve just had their only real opportunity to fight this administration.
Fuck them all. Every single one of them should be ejected from the caucus.
They held out for 40 days just to torture ppl who need benefits
Yep and Leadership sit this up so it look like it was 8 traitor. These were all safe seats. Its goddamn conspiracy. Fuck Chuck.
And this is why we need to shout down and muppet that blindly parrots “vote blue no matter who.” These folks rely on the flawed assumption that electing Democrats is the fastest way to fight authoritarianism. But if the party is actually just a scam? If it’s just controlled opposition? You have no great options at that point. At that point your only option is to ignore the fake opposition and push for a new left wing party, even if it takes you 20 years to implement. Voting for a captured opposition party is little more than an act of masturbation.
Maybe when you lose your healthcare you will understand why they did it.
Edit:
Edited the post to include what I responded to, because it seems people miss the context.
I clearly support the attempt to save ACA. Not the 8 senators that quit.
Are you implying I don’t already need the affordable care act? Because I do. They acted like they wouldn’t fucking cave for 40 days then these 8 go and say meh fuck it who cares. wtf was it all for then?
The sunk-cost fallacy isn’t a winning argument, here. But the goal of protecting healthcare for regular people is a strong enough goal that it doesn’t need sunk-cost. These 8 could have protected their people but jammed-out.
They’re saying that the fact that they folded makes all the harm of the last 40 days meaningless. These 8 motherfuckers waited until extra harm had been done before signing off on the harm caused by getting the ACA.
This outcome is the worst possible. If they’d been spineless 6 weeks ago they’d still be traitors, but this is somehow even worse.
Oh come on! It wasn’t meaningless! It was a cynical con to get votes that they abandoned as soon as the election was over!
You can say the same about every lost fight. With that mentality, nobody would ever fight for the right thing. Obviously it was an attempt to save ACA, then these 8 jumped ship, probably claiming the pain threshold had become too high.
It sucks, but you can’t say the fight didn’t have to be fought.
They know it won’t pass.
They’re relying on the old tactic of them getting that vote, then blaming progressives for failing to get it passed.
THESE are the Democrats that should be uprooted from the party and replaced with candidates that actually represent their voter base.
The fact that Dems has this many spoilers shows you that they aren’t really beating the controlled opposition claims.
We need a Democratic Party that fights back. Not one that caves to evil.
THIS is why many people on Lemmy are disillusioned by Democrats. Dems had only positive outcomes for themselves by letting the shutdown continue. They could have waited while Trump fucks the citizenry more and more, deepening their political capital for 2026.
Instead, all of the Dems who aren’t facing re-election next year, or have re-election in 2028 or 2030 voted to end the shutdown. These Dems have no opportunity loss for voting this way. Un-fucking-believable
On the other hand the end of ACA will hurt Trumpism a lot, since many of his voters were using this benefit
And if the vote happens and passes and people get to keep their health care, will you apologize to all these democrats and admit they made the right decision?
And if the vote never materializes, or ends in inevitable failure, will you apologize for posting stupid fucking hypotheticals like this one?
I will never apologize for hypotheticals. Even the stupid fucking ones!
But… What if you did?
Now that’s a stupid fucking hypothetical!
All the skies need the pies?
🥧
This is absolutely not going to be what happens or it would’ve happened already
I think raising attention to this issue is the only thing Democrats could hope to accomplish. And they did it with the shutdown.
Now if Republicans do not hold a vote, or if they vote against it, there will be much more negative attention given to them.
I believe this funding only goes until Jan 31st. So if they don’t pass the healthcare in December, the government will just be shut down again.
What are you smoking? 8 Democrats have now cosigned a poison pill of throwing millions of people off healthcare in addition to everything trump is doing with the government.
Not a single concession from republicans. This outcome is only slightly better than just approving the republican budget and there will be another budget fight in 3 months that republicans will be more prepared for.
And what is keeping the government shutdown going to do that is different? They would still lose their healthcare!
Do you honestly believe the Republicans were going to cave on this issue?
They were because they need to pay ICE agents etc.
https://archive.is/XLxFL
You sure they weren’t still getting paid? This article was from a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s changed since then.
Their budget is not infinite and there’s reason to believe they were already dipping into funding stashes they shouldn’t be out of desperation. Imo if you can defund the people terrorizing your cities that is consequential positive.
They certainly raised attention to how utterly worthless they have always been and always will be.
Haha, good one
That’s a couple of fucking enormous ifs you’re basing your dreams on. In all my days, and I’m very old, a party caving while they had the support of the voters but the minority in Congress has never worked out.
In all your days had a government shutdown ever resulted in anything substantial?
Substantial yes, but not necessarily good. One enabled Reagan to get the Contras funded,one helped Bush lower taxes on the wealthy, another led to Clinton’s reelection…
In general the population has blamed Republicans for causing shutdowns, through history, but Democrats have repeatedly caved on them without attaining their goals.
I sincerely hope this one brings about the end of Schumer’s career.
That won’t happen. Cons will fuck over Americans.
The Dems that caved with this vote had “hope” their Con counterparts would vote the right way.
They didn’t even get real assurances in policy measures!!!
I will give you $100 if the vote passes. 100 United States Dollars if they get the vote, it passes Congress, and Trump doesn’t veto it. Hold me to this. I will send you $100 dollars, via PayPal, Venmo, Cash app, or a fucking wire transfer. (If you wait for me to get paid, depesning on when the vote passes.)
Republicans won’t allow it. To think they ever will is a foolish wish. You might as well ask Trump to suddenly become a good person like he was haunted by 3 sprits in the middle of the night.
They had the the Trump and Republicans in a gambit of chess, and then sacrificed a Queen and Rook to just get rid of their possible Checkmate. And that’s somehow smart when they lost more pieces and haven’t won anything, just lost more things we could have kept around.