Hi, I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.
And joining me today is national politics reporter Seth McLaughlin.
[GERBO] We’ve got ourselves another government shutdown, the first one since 2018. That one dealt with border wall funding when President Trump was in his first term. Now, here in President Trump’s second term, we’ve got a battle over health care spending and what Democrats would like to see. What is the crux behind why the government and so many facilities and resources across the country have been paused? What is the crux behind this shutdown in 2025?
[MCLAUGHLIN] We got here because Republicans wanted to keep the government chugging along for seven weeks under a proposal that would basically keep the government funded at current levels. But Democrats have wanted to add provisions that would, number one, extend some healthcare subsidies — COVID-era enhanced healthcare subsidies — under Obamacare, that help people get health coverage and afford health coverage. And they are pushing to reverse some of the Medicaid cuts that were enacted as part of President Trump’s signature domestic achievement, which was the Big Beautiful Bill.
But Republicans have balked at that. They say all those negotiations over the healthcare stuff, whether it’s the subsidies or the Medicaid cuts, should happen later. And that for right now, they should just pass a bill that keeps the government chugging along. And so now it’s kind of turned into a finger-pointing game over who’s going to blink first. The magic number for Republicans to get to in the Senate is eight that will allow them to clear the filibuster and move forward with whatever bill they endorse.
And right now they appear to be at three, with three Democrats on board, including John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who broke with his party and also warned his party that if they did not jump aboard the Republican proposal, that it would open the door for the Trump administration to try some shenanigans and push forward with some of their plans to reduce the size and scope of federal government by cutting programs, perhaps firing people. And now we see President Trump and the OMB director following through on those threats.
[GERBO] Yeah, on that point, Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget Director, they are trying some weaponization, some punitive measures to make Democrats feel the pinch in this shutdown. You typically have a furlough period where workers are just kind of basically put on pause. The Trump administration has indicated that it intends to do layoffs, which would be a step beyond a furlough, perhaps to reduce the size of the federal government in that manner, a la what Elon Musk and his government efficiency efforts were doing at the beginning of this year.
Add into that a recent freeze of $18 billion in infrastructure funding that was headed toward New York City for a couple of different projects by the Department of Transportation. And to your point, Seth, that it seems that Republicans are going to take a harder tack, definitely more so than Trump did in his first term, when it was a shutdown over border wall funding. In this go-round, they do want to make Democrats feel the pinch here and kind of put them on the defensive for this standoff.
[MCLAUGHLIN] Yeah, it’s who’s going to blink first. Democrats are gonna say Republicans wanna toss millions of people off healthcare, basically hurt people that need it most. And Republicans, their main counterargument has been that Democrats wanna provide healthcare benefits to illegal aliens. And Democrats reject that. But our resident immigration expert, Stephen Dinan, has said there’s actually some truth to the fact that some illegal immigrants are, in fact, eligible for Obamacare subsidies. And it depends on how they enter the country, what country they entered from. There’s all kinds of complex stuff where you get in the weeds. But it would include some of those that are here on Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to citizens of countries in war or dealing with natural disaster or something like that, as well as some asylum seekers and those granted parole. All those could be eligible in some way, shape, or form for the Obamacare marketplace.
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