What You Need to Know About the Government Shutdown

As the government shutdown enters its sixteenth day, the Democratic Party still refuses to fund it.  Federal employees will soon have no paychecks coming their way, and the only ones to blame are the Democrats. They stubbornly are holding on to their position of raising the budget to a staggering increase of $1.5 trillion for a government already $38 trillion in debt. The most significant sticking point of the shutdown is healthcare.

The first dispute has to do with subsidies. They were a part of the original Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama Administration, and enhanced by Biden during the COVID pandemic. Under Biden, the subsidies increased and expanded. Those subsidies are to expire at the end of this year. 

It cost the federal government $1.8 trillion to fund the Obamacare subsidies. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls them a “boondoggle.” He contends the subsidies go to insurance companies, making healthcare more expensive. He continued, “So if indeed the subsidy is going to be continued, it needs real reform. But there’s a lot of ideas on the table to do that, probably 100 different ideas on how to fix it, but we can’t do that overnight.” Since they do not expire until December, Johnson says there is plenty of time to resolve this issue without shutting the government down and blames the Democrats.

The subsidy issue is not the only reason for the shutdown. For the Democrats to agree to a Continuing Resolution, they demand that non-citizens be given healthcare. During the Biden Administration, illegal aliens were provided emergency healthcare at hospitals. The Congressional Budget Office reported Medicaid paid $16.2 billion to cover the emergency costs.

Biden’s emergency healthcare was stopped when the big, beautiful bill was passed. Vice President J.D. Vance commented, “We turned off that funding because, of course, we want American citizens to benefit from those hospital services, not to be taxed, and then to have those hospital services go to illegal aliens.” For the Democrats to agree to reopen the government, they insist on funding illegal aliens’ healthcare, a proposal that is dead on arrival for the Republicans.

The final issue about healthcare precipitating the shutdown is the Democrats’ insistence on abortion and gender transitions. Two Republican Senators, Rick Scott from Florida and Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, are ringing the bell of the Democratic strategy. They claim Obamacare has been backing abortions and gender transitions through subsidies paid for by taxpayers.

The complicated gyrations of how this works started when the Affordable Care Act began. The Hyde Amendment dictates that federal funds cannot be used for abortion. To get around the problem, Obama permitted insurance companies to collect a surcharge from participants on the exchange. The extra cost would be placed in a separate account run by the insurance companies and used to cover the cost of elective abortions. A great deal of the money collected goes to Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion provider in the country. Some states have opted out, but 27 states did not and were required by Obamacare to have at least one plan by 2017 to include an insurance company that would pay for abortions and gender reassignments.  

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana summed the logjam perfectly: “Americans’ tax dollars should never be used to fund the killing of unborn children or dangerous gender transition procedures. We need to end the Schumer Shutdown so we can make health care more affordable, not subsidize Democrats’ radical anti-family, anti-patient agenda.”

Republicans, hold your ground. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for abortions and gender transitions surreptitiously.