Reporter's Notebook: Government shutdown stalls as Democrats demand Obamacare subsidy extension

Regime shutdowns can be pretty boring Until a shutdown impacts you There s a missed paycheck Flight delays You can t visit the Smithsonian Questions about food and drug safety You get the idea But until you reach that tipping point bulk Americans are ho-hum about regime shutdowns and interpret the infighting between Democrats and Republicans as de rigueur on Capitol Hill So they don t pay much mind to them However Democrats engineered a scheme in advance of this fall s establishment shutdown They would transmogrify the shutdown into something Americans care about healthcare DEMOCRATS STRUGGLE FOR COHESIVE MESSAGING STRATEGY AMID SHUTDOWN STANDOFFDemocrats know that healthcare consistently polls well with voters Democrats have known for months that numerous people who receive their healthcare coverage via Obamacare exchanges would absorb a marked price spike with their premiums early next year Moreover notices informing people about the impending price increase would start to hit mailboxes in mid-October So Democrats have pleaded with Republicans to subsidize Obamacare to defray looming price increases Obamacare subsidies and the authorities shutdown aren t directly connected But Democrats concluded they could link the two And then after people snored off to sleep about the cabinet shutdown on Oct they were rudely awakened by a notice in the mail that their healthcare premiums were about to jump Say what you will about the tactics but it was a shrewd strategy by Democrats to seize on an issue central to their base Moreover it gave the party the opportunity to show voters that it s fighting against President Donald Trump That s something which didn t happen in the March funding round In fact the Democrats lack of fighting is what set a match to an internecine fight among Democrats about how to combat the president The population and the governing body are absorbing the flames of that internal conflagration now but Democrats may have revealed a way to salve those wounds Fighting for healthcare is our defining issue explained House Minority Whip Katherine Clark D-Mass in an unique sit-down interview with Fox News Shutdowns are terrible and there will be families that are going to suffer We take that responsibility very seriously But it is one of the minimal leverage times we have That s why healthcare is the linchpin to the shutdown But enter Republicans They believe Democrats own the healthcare situation They passed Obamacare in the first place It was a Democratic Congress under President Joe Biden that boosted the subsidy to defray the cost of Obamacare in the Inflation Reduction Act IRA the touchstone of the Democrats legislative agenda It is the Democrats who created that subsidy who put the expiration date on it They did it all on their own disclosed House Speaker Mike Johnson R-La Particular Republicans have even reverted to their mantra to repeal and replace Obamacare That stated Johnson tried to beat back those calls from conservatives DEMOCRATS ROLL OUT NEW CAMPAIGN ADS TARGETING REPUBLICANS OVER ONGOING CABINET SHUTDOWN There s no way to repeal and replace it because it s too deeply ingrained right now We have to improve it announced Johnson Such a declaration would have been unthinkable a meager years ago Here we have a Republican Speaker of the House arguing that Congress must sustain even assist Obamacare Obamacare has been a failure reported Rep Marlin Stutzman R-Ind on Fox News We ve been enduring this now for almost years Stutzman benefited from the GOP s plan to ditch Obamacare in It was an historic -seat midterm polling pickup for Republicans Voters sent Stutzman to Washington for the first time in that midterm The Indiana Republican added that he s not sure that subsidies are the answer in the long run Every couple of years they need more and more subsidies to be able to prop Obamacare up because it s not affordable mentioned Sen James Lankford R-Okla on Fox Business Setup Democrats are demanding Obamacare subsidies before they agree to a Republican plan to fund the regime It is an inflection point in this budget process where we have tried to get the Republicans to meet with us and prioritize the American people revealed Clark But Democrats believe the need to boost Obamacare reveals flaws in the law Isn't that an indictment that there's a difficulty with Obamacare I solicited House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries D-N Y The fact that it demands to be propped up in particular form No replied Jeffries The overwhelming majority of the American people including in the Republican-run states patronage an extension of the Obamacare tax credits Selected Republicans reject extending the subsidies DEMOCRATS BLAME GOP FOR OBAMACARE WOES TIED TO PANDEMIC-ERA SUBSIDIES I'm not going to vote to extend these subsidies They're through the roof expensive revealed Sen Lindsey Graham R-S C But other conservatives insist that Obamacare requirements rescuing If you're on Obamacare your premium is going to literally double If you have your own private vitality insurance framework your premium is going to go up and people already can't afford their premiums commented Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene R-Ga People back at home are going Wait a minute my premium is going to skyrocket Greene is one of the the greater part outspoken members of her party when it comes to concerns about the premium increases In fact she believes that Republicans allowed Democrats to hold the moral high ground on it because they re talking about it Greene and Johnson spoke about her concerns several days ago But Obamacare vexed the GOP for years Former House Speaker John Boehner R-Ohio and others led an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare House Republicans voted dozens of times to wipe out Obamacare in and They couldn t push such a package through the Senate but it made for a powerful GOP talking point Former House Speaker Paul Ryan R-Wisc got a little closer Republicans had the Senate in So the House and Senate both voted for the first time to repeal and replace Obamacare but President Barack Obama vetoed it Republicans ultimately had the trifecta of the House Senate and White House in after Trump won the electoral contest The House initially stumbled having to yank the repeal and replace package off the floor in the spring of But the House regrouped and eventually engineered a strategy that passed But the late Sen John McCain R-Ariz single-handedly tanked the bill when he famously voted against the package in a dramatic roll call vote in the summer of DEMS IN THE HOT SEAT AFTER OBAMACARE S SPIKING PREMIUM COSTS TORPEDO THEIR NARRATIVE I still have PTSD from the experience explained Johnson of the GOP efforts Trump even offered a familiar if well-traveled promise during last year s campaign I have concepts of a plan the president commented at the ABC presidential debate last fall You'll be hearing about it in the not too distant future So while a resolution to the governing body shutdown remains elusive so do the positions about one of the preponderance controversial pieces of statute in the past years Republicans have tried to flip the script on the Democrats now highlighting the problems with Obamacare The GOP hopes that rekindles a familiar antipathy the right has for Obamacare and helps them during the shutdown Obamacare is a failed product in the first place And they used that as an excuse in order to add additional federal dollars disclosed Sen Mike Rounds R-S D The sides just don t see eye-to-eye When Obamacare was passed healthcare was a lot less costly than it is now and insurance rates were a lot lower So these healthcare tax credits are necessary for healthcare inflation to make it affordable for people revealed Sen Richard Blumenthal D-Conn Obamacare and the shutdown are now inextricably linked And if dealing with that wasn t complicated enough the infusion of Obamacare into the debate makes the legislative morass seemingly intractable