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.
They held out for 40 days just to torture ppl who need benefits
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?
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.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.
They’re saying that the fact that they folded makes all the harm of the last 40 days meaningless.
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!
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.
You sure they weren’t still getting paid? This article was from a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s changed since then.
I think raising attention to this issue is the only thing Democrats could hope to accomplish.
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.
For those of you American’s who might want to contact these Senators to give them some feedback:
https://www.cortezmasto.senate.gov/contact/connect/
https://www.fetterman.senate.gov/contact/ https://sengov.com/pennsylvania/john-fetterman/
https://www.kaine.senate.gov/contact
https://www.rosen.senate.gov/email-jacky/
https://www.hassan.senate.gov/contact
https://www.shaheen.senate.gov/contact/contact-jeanne
I’ve already tried yelling down the empty hallway once. Sleazebag Durbin sent me back a nice form letter thanking me for expressing my opinion. It was the most pointless thing ever. I doubt my words were even read by an intern.
California Governor Gavin Newsom summed the situation up the most succinctly. “Pathetic,” he wrote on X Sunday.
Even Newsom is piling on?
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They may have been “protecting” the filibuster. If Republicans removed the filibuster, it would pave the way for Democrats to do the same thing. If Democrats were to lose the excuse of the Republican filibuster stopping them from passing legislation, they’d be forced to reveal that there are many more fucking disingenuous pieces of shit just like Manchin and Sinema ready to tank progressive legislation.
It’s “oops all manchins” as far as I’m concerned,
I don’t think it’s necessarily all Manchin’s but I wouldn’t be surprised if 30-70% were on a Manchin-like spectrum. I’m pretty sure that when most mainstream Democrats champion anything remotely progressive, they don’t really want it to fully succeed (if at all) and would actually vote against the original legislation as written. The supposed champions are depending on Republicans and the open Manchin’s to negotiate it down to something the champions would actually be willing to vote for.
I remember, years ago, Republicans put some extremely unpopular legislation up for a vote as a performative gesture knowing it would receive zero Democrat votes. Then one or maybe a few Democrats strategically voted in favor, knowing it would be catastrophic for the Republicans approval if they actually passed it in a Republican controlled Congress. Suddenly the remaining Republicans were forced to vote against the bill in order to prevent it from passing. I recall it was considered a very ballsy and impressive move from Democratic leadership.
Without the filibuster, the roles could absolutely be reversed… but the bill would be extremely popular and Republicans could show the true nature of the Democratic party as the Democrats purposely tank it to prevent it from actually passing.
the republicans removed the filibuster the other day to get a bunch of nominations through. It barely made the news.
https://time.com/7316763/nuclear-option-senate-republicans-trump-nominees/
There are more “low stakes” situations where removing the filibuster has been more or less normalized.
Passing the budget is a different beast altogether.
Oh man they’re really feeling torn into! I bet they’re sitting in their mansions just racked with guilt and shame over how upset their constituents are! I’m sure they feel just awful for their staffer who has to reply to all the messages they get with a bland, form letter that addresses none of their questions or concerns.
Which one of these senators has a primary opponent?
Textbook definition of controlled opposition
Some rambling thoughts:
For all the screeching about 3P leading up to the election, NOW might be the time to drive something like the Working Families Party (that helped elect Zohran) forward and purposefully fragment the Dems at a federal level. What is there to lose? They’re compromised and failing to pose any kind of opposition while Nazis literally control every facet of federal government (and are definitely fucking with elections). Splitting the party would act as a dead man’s switch that puts pressure on the Dems to shift left and form a coalition or officially die as a party.
Realistically, ~3% support would be enough to be a serious threat. Remember that MAGA started with the joke of a tea party
I’m not saying this is a perfect idea, this is just an angry shower thought in response to the Dems. But I wanna know your thoughts, agree or disagree
They’re on the same neoliberal team.
Yeah stop sending money for chuck Schumer to use to fuck everyone. At least Donald trump took donors money and did what he said he was going to do, give to a party you agree with and no longer the so called least bad option. Real progressives need to see the ship sinking and get off now.
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Preserving the extremely shitty health care system as it was before the shutdown is not what I would call greatness
Dems prove once again that they have NO IDEA how to represent the people who voted for them… or even just like, make themselves even slightly likable.
Extortion works
What we’ll never hear is what those eight received in their personal bank accounts. They weren’t so much “holding out” as negotiating.
I have to say, some kind of incentive (monetary or next step of career/legacy) seems like kind of an obvious question, and it’s weird nobody has even pointed that out. Especially if most of these Dems aren’t seeking reelection.
What kind of Democrat betrays her party, and then goes on Fox News of all places to give the details?
I contacted both of my no vote senators and told them to get their house in order or I will not be donating, progressive or not, to them.
claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits
Stonewalling the budget was how you could have done that. Fucking lying pieces of shit.
Fucking expel them.
