In Defense of Caving In
By Alec Pruchnicki
When eight Democrat and Independent senators voted to end the government shut down, they were severely criticized for giving in to the Republicans. Other Democratic leaders, like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, also caught flak for not fighting harder or somehow controlling the senators and preventing them from caving in. Rachel Maddow, of MS NOW, complained that after all the fighting for health insurance subsidies, they received nothing in exchange for their inability to hold the line and continue the shutdown. But immediately afterward, Lawrence O’Donnell, also of MS NOW, listed benefits the Democrats did receive.
The most important compromise by the Republicans was to allow a vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies, a vote which is underway as I write this article. This measure is likely to fail and massive increases in health insurance costs will occur over the next few months. Forcing the Republicans to take an actual vote–where every one of them will be held responsible for insurance rate increases–is something they very much wanted to avoid. Now they will be on record for causing the increases. O’Donnell also pointed out that the two Democratic senators from Nevada were watching their state’s tourist-related economy deteriorate rapidly due to air traffic disruptions which make it difficult for people to get to the state to gamble. There were other provisions having to do with limited layoffs of workers. In general, these small victories weren’t the overwhelming success that Democrats had hoped for—but would continuing the shutdown have been successful if they held out longer?
Senator Angus King, an Independent who votes with the Democrats, simply stated that they were not going to win this standoff. Politicians hate getting into fights they can’t win and after a while it seemed overwhelmingly likely that they were not going to force the Republicans to give in. Why not?
The hope was that a shut down would so injure government workers, the overall economy, and members of the public who are helped by government programs, that people would rise up and put increasing pressure on Republicans to compromise. It was a beautiful theory and tactic but it was destroyed by some ugly realities. The major fact is that Republicans don’t care if their own constituents live or die. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech but as literally true.
Lax gun control laws are supported by Republicans even after horrific mass shootings in GOP-controlled states. Guns are the number one killer of young people. Reproductive rights and abortion restrictions lead to high rates of maternal mortality from miscarriages and complicated births. During COVID, shut downs, isolation rules, vaccination programs and requirements, and political support for vaccine availability were all undermined by Republicans resulting in at least several hundred thousand preventable deaths. These were mostly concentrated in Republican-led states and GOP-controlled areas of Democratic states. Finally, ten states completely or partially controlled by Republicans have not utilized the Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid eligibility, denying health insurance coverage to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of their own constituents. No coverage means less access to basic medical care and more deaths. The Republicans don’t care about any of these issues.
Sometimes this neglect occurs because these spineless Republican invertebrates won’t stand up to Trump, and sometimes these are beliefs and behaviors that pre-dated Trump’s rise to power due to hostility to government programs or hostility to the people who might need them. In either case, they don’t care if their own constituents live or die.
This is the level of opposition the Democrats faced as the shut down continued. I’m sure some were getting calls from constituents they were actually trying to help, or at least keep alive. How much of this pressure, that they hoped would be successful against the Republicans, did they have to resist as the situation dragged on? I don’t know what I would have done if I were an elected official answering to a Democratic voting base. I like to think that I would have found some way to hold on and continue pressure on the Republicans. But there are only so many emails and phone calls from people in immediate distress that I could have tolerated while waiting for the long-term victory that might never come.
So, the fight continues. The behavior of the Republicans and the damage caused to the people, including many of their own voters, will have to be explained and publicized as much as possible in upcoming elections. Lives depend on it.
