SHUTDOWN UPDATE: One Week in, Democrats Refuse to Budge on Healthcare for Illegals, Obamacare Subsidy Talks Proceeding

One week into the government shutdown that began at midnight on October 1, Congress appears no closer to passing a continuing resolution, as Democrats have continued to demand that Republicans restore taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens, pass massive Obamacare subsidies, and restrict President Donald Trump’s authority to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse as a price for reopening the government.

On Monday, Senate Democrats blocked Republicans’ stopgap funding bill for the fifth time, deepening the stalemate. Just three senators – Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, along with Independent Angus King of Maine – have broken with Chuck Schumer to vote to reopen the government. At least five more will need to cross the aisle for the funding bill to proceed to a final vote.

As AMAC Newsline has previously reported, Democrats have taken fire even from some of their allies in the corporate media over demands that Republicans repeal provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), which prevent illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded healthcare and other benefits. While Democrats have accused Republicans of lying and said that no illegal aliens are receiving benefits, normally friendly pundits on cable news networks have questioned why, then, Democrats are so insistent on reversing portions of the OBBB, which ensures that illegal aliens are not on Medicaid.

As the shutdown has dragged on, the central issue has become an extension of expanded Obamacare premium subsidies that Democrats passed during the Biden administration. In March 2021, with pandemic lockdowns still in effect in many states, the American Rescue Plan expanded premium subsidy eligibility to those with incomes above 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

That expansion was supposed to be a temporary COVID-era measure to help families through a tough time. But Democrats extended the subsidies through 2025 in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act – knowing full well that there would be another concerted push to make the subsidies permanent now.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats have hammered messaging that premium costs for some Americans will increase if the subsidies aren’t made permanent – a move that would cost $400 billion over just the next decade. Accounting professor Ge Bai summed up the situation nicely in a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal:

“The expiration will affect roughly 1.6 million current enrollees. These are the people with incomes above 400% of the federal poverty level who have been receiving subsidies that cap their premium contributions at 8.5% of income. A family of four in Arizona making $600,000, a married couple in West Virginia making $580,000, and a single individual in Vermont making $180,000 all qualify for subsidies. Simply put, since 2021, Congress has been bribing higher-income Americans to purchase expensive ObamaCare plans by hiding the plans’ true price tags using taxpayer dollars.”

Nonetheless, Republicans appear open to negotiating a subsidy expansion. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted on X that she is in favor of expanding the subsidies “because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.” (Of course, as Bai also points out in her piece, the expiration of the subsidies “merely restores the original ObamaCare premium-support structure.”)

But Republicans have maintained that negotiations can only take place if Democrats reopen the government first – which is where the current stalemate sits, as Democrats have been unwilling to comply. As House Speaker Mike Johnson has argued, it would be setting a bad precedent to allow Democrats to hold the government hostage anytime they want to extract policy concessions from Republicans.

Democrats believe that the public is on their side in the shutdown. Polls show that the country is largely divided along partisan lines in who they blame.

The next big pressure point in the shutdown will come on Friday, as some federal workers will miss their first paycheck if the government is not reopened. Currently, many federal employees, including air traffic controllers, are working without pay, which has already led to some flight delays. The Trump administration has also used the shutdown to halt funding for some government projects and furlough some 750,000 federal employees – many of whom could be fired if the shutdown drags on.

As of now, the best prospect for ending the shutdown remains five more Democrats crossing the aisle to allow a vote on the continuing resolution.