WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats don’t seem to have the appetite to force another painful and protracted government shutdown when they’ll have the chance at the end of January, with many arguing the party has already seized the upper hand on health care.
Some Democratic senators believe their party succeeded at shaping the narrative and making the GOP reckon with skyrocketing health insurance premiums for millions of Americans next year, even if they ultimately don’t get an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies they had sought.
“As far as raising national consciousness of the challenge families will face, I think we did our job,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told HuffPost.
Other members of the party, however, still seem reluctant to cut any deal with Republicans without subsidies or meaningful checks on President Donald Trump.
The split is a continuation of divides over the party’s strategy of the last shutdown, and its end in late November when eight Senate Democrats broke with the party and voted to fund the government through January in exchange for a vote on extending the subsidies, which ultimately failed. But the party’s stronger political positioning and the rapidly approaching midterm elections seem to have shrunk many senators’ appetite for risk and given senators who oppose a shutdown the upper hand.
