OPINION:
Given the noise from the left, it is now obvious that a pretty significant chunk of the Democrats didn’t really have a plan, or even the intention, to end the government shutdown. They simply wanted it to continue as long as it was damaging Republicans, irrespective of who else was hurt.
That makes this particular shutdown not terribly different from most other shutdowns, which have been typically instigated by one side that wants policy outcomes it hasn’t been able to secure through regular order, or what passes for regular order nowadays. This now-ritual pointless waste of time did not disappoint. It was, as all of its antecedents, a pointless waste of time, punctuated by an auto-da-fe imposed on some sacrificial lamb (this time, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer).
A little history might be useful. No shutdown has ever resulted in the adoption of a specific policy advocated by the team that wanted the shutdown. This go around was no different.
All that said, the Democrats, intentionally or otherwise, achieved two material things. First, they blunted the political momentum of congressional Republicans and the president, who have pretty much had the run of the place for the past year or so. It is tough to sell economic gains, affordability, restoration of law and order, and whatever might be going on elsewhere in the world when one’s own government is having difficulty feeding the hungry and landing planes.
Perhaps not coincidentally, since the onset of the shutdown, Republicans have had the worst of the polling. Survey respondents, usually by margins of 8 to 12 percentage points, have assigned more blame for the perceived or real pathologies of the lapse in funding to Republicans than to Democrats.
Second, the Democrats received a fairly specific promise that the Senate would have a vote on the enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act premiums. That seems like an important concession, given that the president has indicated he is willing to play Let’s Make a Deal on this issue, the Republicans have never won a vote on the ACA and they are about 20 points underwater on polling about the issue.
How will Mr. Schumer look if the ACA tax credits get extended in a few weeks?
Of course, the underlying reality is that all this sound and fury signifies nothing. This shutdown won’t change a single, blessed thing with respect to our relatively dire financial situation. The federal government spent about $6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024; it probably spent about $7 trillion in fiscal 2025. The federal deficit in fiscal 2024? About $1.8 trillion. Our federal deficit in fiscal 2025? About $1.8 trillion. When we pass a continuing resolution or whatever in February, we will be guaranteeing yet another deficit in the $1.8 trillion range. We — you, me and the nation — will be $40 trillion in debt pretty soon.
Will extending the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act’s premiums make that any better? No. Are the ACA tax credits an egregious scam on the taxpaying public? Yes. Does that cash wind up in the pockets of insurance companies? You know it does. Think about that when the inevitable “phase out” or “phase down” of those tax credits happens.
This shutdown is small beer compared with the rough justice the bond market will administer when it gets around to putting the federal government’s fiscal house in order. That, unfortunately, is the trajectory on which we find ourselves, and no amount of political gamesmanship will change it.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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