House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed anger over an emerging deal with Republicans to reopen the federal government after his party kept it closed for more than 40 days.
“House Democrats have consistently maintained that bipartisan legislation that funds the government must also decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jefferies said in a statement.
“For seven weeks, Democrats in the House and Senate have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people,” the statement continued. “It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
“As a result of the Republican refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket. Many will not be able to afford a doctor when they or their children need one,” it continued.
“America is far too expensive. We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven-week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation,” it said.
The statement concluded: “Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country and the American people know it.”
Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, with zero Republican votes in 2010, which included hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer-provided subsidies. At the time, they claimed that the ACA would “fix” healthcare and keep costs down, neither of which came true.
Also, Democrats have consistently voted to keep the government shut down for nearly a month and a half, thereby depriving tens of millions of Americans SNAP and other benefits, as well as paychecks for millions of federal workers and U.S. military personnel.
The Senate made a huge step toward reopening the government on Sunday night when several chamber Democrats gave in and joined Republicans in their effort to adopt a new proposal to end the closure.
As the day wore on, it became more and more evident that the shutdown, which was now in its 41th day as of Monday, would be coming to an end after senators revealed a bipartisan bundle of spending bills that they intended to attach to a modified plan to reopen the government.
Eight Democrats in the Senate voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, which was the first stage in the GOP-led plan. Many of the legislators who broke away from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were part of conversations between Republicans and Democrats over the past few weeks.
Senators Angus King (I-Maine), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, were among those who sided with the plan.
“The question was, does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits? Our judgment was that it will not,” King said. “It would not produce that result. And the evidence for that is almost seven weeks of fruitless attempts to make that happen.”
Schumer and other Senate Democrats have said for weeks that they would only vote to reopen the government if there was a real deal to extend Obamacare subsidies that were about to run out. But several of them caved to Republicans on Sunday, making the last seven weeks essentially a fruitless exercise in political gamesmanship.