Democrats’ position on the government shutdown contains no small amount of hypocrisy. Even the corporate media have pointed out that people like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were decrying the problems associated with government shutdowns as recently as March.
But the problem with Democrats’ demands, such as they are, goes well beyond hypocrisy. Democrats are insisting on getting their demands met — namely, an expansion of Obamacare, via extension of enhanced subsidies — in exchange for reopening the government. In making that appeal, they’re citing Republicans’ unsuccessful efforts to defund Obamacare, chief of which was the government shutdown in 2013. Viewed from this perspective, Democrats’ position looks even more asinine — they are demanding that they succeed where Republicans (largely) failed.
GOP Concessions in 2013
During the current conflict, some observers have occasionally hearkened back to the shutdown over defunding Obamacare in October 2013. Without relitigating the policies and strategies behind the dispute, it’s worth taking time to examine exactly how the shutdown ended.
On Oct. 17, 2013, President Obama signed into law an appropriations measure ending the standoff. That law, which is roughly a dozen pages long, contained three components.
It included a “clean” continuing resolution, extending prior year spending levels (with some agreed-upon exceptions) for three months, until Jan. 15, 2014.
It also contained a debt limit increase, albeit one with a convoluted mechanism. The law allowed President Obama to raise the debt limit unilaterally, subject only to a resolution of disapproval that Congress would consider under expedited procedures. This mechanism amounted to political theater — Republicans let Obama keep adding to the national debt, so long as Democrats had to take a separate “show vote” on the issue that Republicans could attack them for in campaign ads.
Sandwiched between the two, it also included a provision requiring the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to certify that the exchanges verify eligibility for subsidies properly, along with requiring two subsequent reports — one by the secretary, and one by the HHS inspector general — on verifying eligibility.
That last element represented the only “concession,” such as it was, that Republicans received from Democrats associated with the “defund Obamacare” shutdown.
On the substance, the verification and reporting requirements amounted to a cross between a political fig leaf — a justification/excuse for congressional Republicans to switch their position and reopen the federal government — and a bag of magic beans. The certification sure didn’t end the possibility of fraud on the Obamacare exchanges; as I’ve frequently noted in these pages in recent months, the expansion of “free” (i.e., zero-dollar premium) plans in 2021 has led to an explosion of waste, fraud, and abuse.
Yet in exchange for those largely meaningless concessions, Republicans didn’t just reopen the government. They also gave the Obama administration a blank check to run up the federal debt for another four months (through Feb. 7, 2014). It was one of the more one-sided legislative agreements in recent memory — a fact worth remembering given the current shutdown.
No Leverage
Democrats are now citing that history as a prime reason why they have to have their demands included in any legislation ending the shutdown. To quote House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.: “Why would we believe that Republicans have any interest in addressing [Obamacare], based on their word, when for 15 years Republicans have been doing everything possible to gut” Obamacare? Schumer said something similar about the timing of any negotiation on an extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies: “We think that when they say later, they mean never.”
There’s another way to look at the quotes from Jeffries and Schumer. One major example, if not the prime example, of Republicans trying to “gut” Obamacare came via the defund fight a dozen years ago. It produced a 21-hour speech from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a government shutdown, and a potential government default, all in the name of stopping the law before its main provisions took effect in January 2014.
Democrats’ present conditions essentially amount to a demand that they succeed where Republicans failed: Because you shut down the government to try and defund Obamacare — for which Republicans got next to nothing — we have to win our government shutdown to expand Obamacare.
That “logic,” if one can call it that, might help Democrats to rationalize away their own hypocrisy. But it doesn’t amount to a mature, considered argument, and it sure won’t help them when the shoe is on the other foot and Democrats are the ones running the government (which, let’s face it, will happen sooner or later).
In the interim, President Trump erred not in canceling and then rescheduling a meeting with congressional Democratic leaders on the issue — but in ever giving them an invite to the White House for discussions in the first place. Given that Democrats spent years decrying “hostage taking” over appropriations measures, Republicans shouldn’t entertain any of their shenanigans one bit. Democrats have no leverage, and know that they have no leverage — meaning Republicans should just stand firm, and wait for Schumer and Jeffries to fold.