Democrats Demand GOP Betray Voters to Fund Government

With government funding set to run out at midnight on September 30, Republicans and Democrats are nowhere near a deal, and a shutdown looks imminent. While Republicans have proposed and passed a clean continuing resolution (CR), Democrats have demanded that Republicans reverse all of their legislative victories from this year to keep the government open – effectively requiring that the GOP undo exactly what the American people voted for last year.

Late last week, the House passed its CR to keep the government open until November 21 – meaning that all funding would continue at current levels until that date. But Senate Democrats used the Senate filibuster rule to block that bill, setting up a standoff that could send the government into a shutdown next week. Any funding bill will need at least seven Democrat votes to clear the 60-vote threshold.

Notably, the new CR that Senate Democrats are currently rejecting would keep funding levels virtually the same as they were under the prior CR that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and nine other Senate Democrats voted for back in March.

Schumer took an immense amount of criticism from the party’s left flank for that vote, and the blowback appears to have had its intended effect. Schumer has now made progressive ultimatums the price for any Democrat support for a funding bill.

Specifically, Schumer and congressional Democrats are insisting on a permanent extension of expanded Obamacare subsidies, a rollback of the Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) passed earlier this year, and restrictions on the president’s ability to rein in wasteful federal spending.

Each of these demands is worth examining in turn, because they all reveal how unwilling Democrats are to accept the outcome of elections and make abundantly clear that if there is a shutdown, Democrats will be entirely to blame for it.

First, Democrats are demanding that Republicans permanently extend Biden-era expanded Obamacare subsidies – a policy so radical that Democrats couldn’t pass it even when they had control of Congress.

These additional subsidies were jammed into the 2021 American Rescue Plan and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act bills that sent inflation soaring above nine percent. But the subsidy expansions had a sunset clause because making them permanent would cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of just the next decade.

Not even Senate Democrats could stomach sending the country down that reckless fiscal path. Now, however, those same Senate Democrats say that Republicans must sign off on this exorbitantly costly expansion of the disastrous Obamacare program as a prerequisite for keeping the government open. That’s a nonstarter, and Democrats know it.

Second, Democrats are demanding that Republicans undo the provisions in the OBBB passed earlier this year which target waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid.

Measures to kick illegal aliens off Medicaid and institute modest work requirements (just 20 hours per week) for able-bodied adults were central components of the OBBB. Democrats have dishonestly described these policies as Medicaid “cuts.” In reality, Medicaid funding is set to increase in total outlays over the next decade (including a $21 billion increase from 2025 to 2026 alone). The program will only spend less in terms of how much it was projected to spend before the OBBB passed – with the difference being a crackdown on people who never should have been on the program in the first place.

In other words, Democrats are taking the position that Republicans must also reverse a major part of President Donald Trump’s signature legislative win – a win that the American people voted for last year – to keep the government open. They are attempting to force Republicans to betray their own voters and actively re-enable the rampant abuse of taxpayer funds by Medicaid cheats. The GOP is right to refuse to engage in that discussion as well.

Finally, Democrats have demanded as a condition for keeping the government open that Republicans explicitly restrict the president’s ability to combat wasteful government spending – yet another action that would directly defy the will of the American people.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump made rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs a pillar of his policy platform. It was no secret that he planned on taking a metaphorical ax to many government programs if he were re-elected, and tens of millions of Americans voted for him in part because of this promise.

Once in office, Trump delivered on that pledge by expertly wielding the powers of the presidency to ensure the executive branch acted as a better steward of Americans’ tax dollars. Republicans helped in this mission by passing the first of what they have promised will be many rescission packages to stop the Washington grifting and corruption that has grown to grotesque proportions in recent decades.

In sum, the Democrats now gunning for a shutdown are saying that the only way to keep the government open is to render the results of last November’s election null and void. They have already rejected essentially the same funding deal that they agreed to six months ago, and are now intentionally taking a hardline position that they know Republicans will never agree to.

The hope for Democrats is that an assist from their media allies will pin blame for a potential shutdown on Trump and Republicans. But Americans should know that it is Democrats who are now abusing the Senate’s longstanding respect for minority rights to hurt the entire country in the hopes of scoring cheap political points.

Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.