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.
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?
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!
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?
I will give you $100 if the vote passes. 100 United States Dollars if they get the vote, it passes Congress, and Trump doesn’t veto it. Hold me to this. I will send you $100 dollars, via PayPal, Venmo, Cash app, or a fucking wire transfer. (If you wait for me to get paid, depesning on when the vote passes.)
Republicans won’t allow it. To think they ever will is a foolish wish. You might as well ask Trump to suddenly become a good person like he was haunted by 3 sprits in the middle of the night.
They had the the Trump and Republicans in a gambit of chess, and then sacrificed a Queen and Rook to just get rid of their possible Checkmate. And that’s somehow smart when they lost more pieces and haven’t won anything, just lost more things we could have kept around.
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.
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.
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.
Somebody pointed out last night that it’s no coincidence that it was exactly 8 senators and conveniently none of them are up for reelection in 2026… It’s enough to make one wonder which other senators also need to be primaried even though they flew under the radar.
Only 13 Dem senators are up for re-election in 2026, so I don’t think its that surprising that none of the 8 that voted for this aren’t.
I would say it’s more surprising that
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Any Dems caved at this point before at least seeing how the showdown between Trump and the courts would play out.
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There have been a lot of fingers pointed at Schumer for his lack of leadership in uniting the party. While I think there’s more than enough to criticize him for (being so shitty about Mamdani, especially during the shutdown being the first and foremost thing I would say shows poor leadership), I have to say I’m holding off immediately jumping to that conclusion.
It may be true, and even though I don’t really trust Schumer in many ways, the reason I hesitate to immediately jump on the bandwagon in this case is because of the specific Democrat that was the first to start parroting this narrative, and has continued to parrot it as loudly as possible since last night.
I read this article around midnight last night:
Sunday’s deal was brokered by Democratic Senators Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both from New Hampshire, and Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, said a person familiar with the talks.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, voted against the measure.
Many Democrats on the Hill watched the deal unfold with displeasure.
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” wrote U.S. Representative Ro Khanna on X. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?"
I hesitate to trust Schumer because it seems like he has reached a point in his career where he (along with many establishment Dems) is too quick to sell out core values. However, I do think Schumer honestly may have held those values at one point in his career, but became too comfortable with the status quo.
On the other hand, Ro Kahnna has no values. He was never supposed to be trusted in the first place, and when I see the media refer to him as a progressive it makes my fucking blood boil. He exists to serve the interests of Peter Thiel, and his own interests/Palantir investments, by keeping Thiel rich and happy.
Broken clocks and what not, so he could be right in this instance. However, knowing how Theil uses the media to manipulate public opinion, and this sneaky mother fucking snake in the grass, being the first to already have that narrative ready to go from the jump, and the media being so quick to help him spread it, makes me suspicious as hell.
What reason did those 3 senators possibly have to suddenly cave, and broker that deal on Sunday fucking night after we went into the weekend with the very public back and forth on SNAP?
And then for the other 5 to join them voting for it. It’s clear where Fetterman’s loyalty lies, but the other 7 Democrats that voted for this seriously couldn’t just wait for the public to know that the circuit court sided with the original ruling to pay SNAP in full? Why is that?
I would say it’s more surprising that
Any Dems caved at this point before at least seeing how the showdown between Trump and the courts would play out.
Dems caving isn’t surprising in the slightest. Infuriating, sure, but absolutely never surprising.
It’s why I’m so disgusted about the one thing they didn’t cave 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,
MAGA tried to hold the Dems hostage, demanding our health care as ransom, and if we didn’t comply, the richest in America would LITERALLY starve the poorest in America, to death.
Instead of caving, the Dems held out, and won a MASSIVE election victory, then, with all their new political capital, they voluntarily flushed it down the toilet, and gave MAGA everything they wanted, and got absolutely nothing in return.
Schmuck Schumer has to go, and every cowardly Democrat must be primaried. A handful need to be brought back (Bernie, AOC, Frost, Crocket, et al), but the rest can go.
I’m so sick of these weak, cowardly Democrats. No wonder MAGAs hate them, and bully them. They have no self-respect at all. Truly pathetic.
Never underestimate the Dems’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Oh, yeah, sometimes I think they do it on purpose. They seem to want to constantly prove that they are better losers than the MAGAs.
They earn more money as the minority, promising to codify Roe v Wade, keep the DREAM Act, protect queer rights.
Why would they ever actually do it when they would lose money next election season?
What the fuck was the point of the shutdown if the Dems are just going to capitulate to whatever republicans want? This was their one bit of leverage and they pissed it away.
I have an insider secret on government shutdowns. Both sides are in on it, both sides plan it, both side cause it and both sides want it. Oh and super duper secret is that both sides are full of bullshit, and they still get their full salary uninterrupted. And one more thing: all politicians lie. By their own nature or else they would not be in politics or have the desire to get in office.
No, both sides are not the same, but collectively they kind of are. And they all manipulate us to think otherwise.
I contacted my democratic representative.
If you didn’t do the same, you have no right to complain.
Yeah I don’t have a Democratic rep to contact
Then what have you done to address the problem? Complaining on Lemmy obviously isn’t helping. Have you tried anything else?
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
Only reach out to them if you are actually in their state. When they receive a flood of calls from people around the country, it’s easy for them to write it off and claim they’re just getting brigaded and it’s not something their actual constituents disagree with.
Nah they are supposed to represent the Democratic Party, and they just caved and took some sort of pay out from the Trump administration. So they can kiss my ass and hear what I have to say
Follow the money… I’m betting someone paid them in some form or another.
IOW, dems told them to cave so the party wouldn’t keep looking less popular, they weren’t going to be reelected anyway.
My guess is that it’s because the FAA started shutting down private flights as more and more ATCs stopped working without pay. As soon as the billionaires were affected by the shutdown, the dems capitulated.
My guess is that they were only pretending to have spines until the polls closed.
