Dems shut down the government because they think it’s not going bankrupt fast enough

Democrats have shut down the federal government because they think the federal debt isn’t spiraling out of control fast enough — they demand the Republican majorities in Congress agree to spend more taxpayer cash on Dems’ priorities.

Dems forced the shutdown by using the filibuster to prevent a Senate floor vote that would’ve passed the House “stopgap” bill to fund federal operations for another six weeks or so.

As their price just to allow a vote, Democrats demand roughly $1.5 trillion in added spending.

Despite their denials, a significant part of that is funding for health coverage for illegal immigrants: Their own alternative bill spelled that out, with language repealing recent GOP legislation that restricts Medicaid coverage of such migrants.

The main category of federal Medicaid spending on “undocumented aliens” jumped from $3 billion in 2023 to $9 billion in 2024; even more federal cash flows indirectly to such care via various state accounting gimmicks that the Biden administration winked at.

An even bigger chunk of Dems’ $1.5 trillion demand is to fund ObamaCare subsidies to lower the price of insurance bought via the “exchanges.”  

Democrats used their Biden-era majorities in Congress to impose these “temporary” subsidies first via the “American Rescue Plan Act” and then the “Inflation Reduction Act” (though of course bailing out ObamaCare had nothing to do with bouncing back from COVID nor fighting inflation).

Millions of Americans won’t buy ObamaCare policies without these subsidies because — despite Dems’ insistence at the time that ObamaCare would “bend the cost curve down” — premiums have nearly doubled since Democrats rammed the law through without a single Republican vote.

The GOP’s willing to discuss restoring some subsidies — but not in the stopgap bill.

Meanwhile, the ObamaCare law also vastly spiked federal Medicaid outlays, bribing states to expand coverage by picking up 90% of the added costs — another “temporary” arrangement that Dems keep extending.

As a result, Uncle Sam’s Medicaid spending has exploded: It jumped from $409 billion in 2019 to $615 billion in 2023 and roughly $650 billion this year.

The GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act this year aimed to slow that growth in coming years; undoing those restraints is another part of Democrats’ $1.5 trillion ransom demand.

Now step back and look at the bigger picture.

Thanks in good part to President Joe Biden’s two huge spending bills, the national debt is now over $37 trillion, up from not quite $28 trillion when he took office.

Not only did that hog-wild spending produce Bidenflation, it put the country on a completely unsustainable fiscal path.

Republicans are trying to restore sanity by 1) slowing Medicaid’s growth, 2) declining to renew the huge subsidies that cover up ObamaCare’s failure, and 3) stopping the use of federal funds to cover illegal immigrants’ health care.

Democrats are trying to blackmail the GOP into surrendering on all three counts — abandoning all efforts to stop the debt from spiraling out of control — simply to fund the government through November.

That’s what this shutdown is all about.