The Truth Behind Republicans' Government Shutdown Lies
Democrats have the policy, the politics, and the truth on their side in the shutdown fight
There’s a time-honored rule in politics: If you want to undermine your opponents, turn their strength into a weakness. As we enter Day Two of the latest government shutdown, that’s precisely what Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to do to Democrats as the parties wage a messaging war over the shutdown.
Even in this era of low Democratic approval, the left has always fared better on the question of which party is stronger on the issue of health care. Voters understand which party is fighting for affordability and expanded access to health care, and that’s at the heart of Democrats’ demands to keep the government open.
Obamacare enhanced subsidies provide tax credits to over 20 million people. They help them afford the monthly premiums on plans purchased through Obamacare. And they expire at the end of the year. Democrats originally expanded the subsidies back in 2021 as part of the Covid-era American Rescue Plan and then again as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. They are now demanding an extension of these subsidies as a condition to supporting a continuing resolution to fund the government. They are also demanding the reversal of steep Medicaid cuts Republicans passed as part of their budget bill earlier this year.
Democrats’ message is clear: When it comes to access to health care, we will draw the line.
Republicans, led by the self-described negotiator in chief, balked at Democrats’ demands. As of midnight Tuesday night, they failed to garner at least eight Democratic votes and allowed the government to shut down. To justify this, instead of engaging in good faith on the substance of the policy disagreement, Trump and his Republicans fanned out to lie to the American people, falsely claiming that Democrats shut the government down over their so-called demand to cover health insurance for undocumented immigrants.
It’s no surprise that Republicans would be so shameless with such an overt lie, nor that their message would take aim at a traditionally winning issue for Democrats. But will their disinformation campaign work? What is the truth around Democrats’ demands? And how will an expiration of the enhanced tax subsidies impact the American public?
Democrats’ Demands
The original Affordable Care Act legislation established the premium subsidies at the center of today’s shutdown fight. Democrats famously passed that law without one Republican vote in 2010. Under the subsidy rules, any American with income between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level received tax credits to help defray the costs of the monthly premiums for any plan they purchased through the ACA exchanges.
Then, as part of their response to the Covid pandemic in 2021 and then again as inflation surged in 2022, Democrats expanded those tax credits to include Americans whose income was above 400% of the federal poverty level.
As Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker explains,
[T]he American Rescue Plan Act introduced enhanced premium tax credits that increased the amount of these tax credits and also expanded eligibility to households with an annual income over 400% of the federal poverty limit ($103,280 for a family of three signing up for coverage in 2025), capping their out-of-pocket premiums for a benchmark plan at 8.5% of income. Since the introduction of the enhanced premium tax credits, enrollment in the ACA Marketplaces has soared, more than doubling from 11.4 million people in 2020 to 24.3 million people in 2025. The enhanced premium tax credits were originally set to expire at the end of 2022 but were then extended as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The enhanced premium tax credits are now set to expire at the end of 2025.
According to a recent study by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, if these tax credits expire, health care premiums would more than double for the 22 million Americans who currently receive tax credits to help pay for their Obamacare premiums:
If the enhanced credits end, recipients would see their premiums increase to $1,906 in 2026 from $888 this year, on average — a 114% increase, according to KFF’s analysis.
Further, from KFF’s analysis:
For example, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000, or 402% of the federal poverty level, would see their yearly premium payments rise by over $22,600 next year, on average, after accounting for the loss of enhanced credits and insurers’ rate increases, KFF found.
A 45-year-old earning $20,000, or 128% of the federal poverty level, in a state that hasn’t expanded Medicaid coverage would see premiums for a benchmark health plan rise from $0 to $420 per year, on average, from the loss of enhanced premium tax credits, KFF said.
And that’s not the end of the likely aftershocks. Per CNN,
Without the more generous aid, consumers are expected to flee the exchanges. About 4 million more people would be uninsured in 2034, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. What’s more, insurers would raise Obamacare premiums even higher since many of those remaining on the exchanges would be sicker and more costly.
No wonder Republicans are lying about the subsidies and trying to shift blame to Democrats.
On this issue in particular, the lies emerging from the White House are particularly brazen. As CNN notes:
“The Democrats want Illegal Aliens, many of them VIOLENT CRIMINALS, to receive FREE Healthcare,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last week.
“Democrats are about to shut down the government because they demand we fund healthcare for illegal aliens,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X last week.
But audacity doesn’t make it true, per CNN’s fact check,
It’s important to note that undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for Obamacare subsidies, and the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act narrowed the eligibility of certain legal immigrants.
Daniel Dale laid out the facts clearly on CNN yesterday:
As Dale notes, Republicans are so desperate to advance these claims, they’re even trotting out the ole “Democrats want to allow ‘illegal aliens’ to have access to emergency room care” canard.
But it’s not Democrats who are demanding that; it was Ronald Reagan, when he signed it into law decades ago.
Amid these persistent lies, Democrats have an opportunity to stand strong and counter this disinformation campaign with a truthful message of their own about who they are fighting for. And they are rising to the moment.
As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday night:
And AOC explained the current dispute in a viral video with Bernie Sanders released yesterday. By demanding Democrats vote for a clean continuing resolution to fund the government, Republicans are asking Democrats to rubber-stamp an agenda that makes health care unaffordable at a time when prices are soaring:
“We need to stand up for the American people, we need to stand up for our health care system, and if they want our votes, they need to make sure we’re protecting every American and making sure that we can do what we can to continue to make health care accessible, affordable, as we fight to make it a human right for all.”
This is solid messaging. But Republicans are determined to make it painful for Democrats to hold the line.
Republican Threats
On Tuesday, leading up to the government funding deadline, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican continuing resolution (CR) that would have extended government funding for seven weeks. Democrats then forced a vote on their own bill that would have done the same except with an extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which Republicans, in turn, blocked.
Now, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has announced that no negotiations will take place as long as the government is shut down. As JD Vance put it on Wednesday, “Let’s fix America’s problems. Let’s work together to solve them. But let’s reopen the government before we have our negotiation about health care policy.” Of course, as Democrats well know, the shutdown represents the only leverage they have to force a negotiation on health care policy.
Knowing this, Majority Leader Thune plans to hold daily votes to force Senate Democrats to go on the record in favor of a shutdown as often as possible. Yesterday’s vote on a clean CR attracted support from three Democrats, but Republicans need a total of 60 votes to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster to reopen the government.
The regime is also leveraging federal resources to spread the message that the blame for the shutdown lies with Democrats, all in clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal civil service employees from engaging in certain political activity. For example, multiple agencies sent out emails to their workers with a White House-driven message.
Also, agencies have altered the automatic out-of-office emails of furloughed workers without employees’ consent to contain anti-Democratic messaging.
Said one Education Department employee,
“None of us consented to this. And it’s written in the first-person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal. I think it violates the Hatch Act.”
Multiple agency websites communicated similar messages:
Trump is reveling in the chaos he and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, will inflict on the American people as long as the government remains shuttered. Trump even posted on Truth Social that he sees this as an opportunity to slash what he considers “Democrat agencies” within the U.S. government.
While layoffs during a shutdown are usually temporary, Vought has already signaled to federal agencies to expect permanent reductions in force. He asserts that the shutdown gives him the prime opportunity and the power to achieve the decimation of the administrative state that he laid out in Project 2025 and that Trump clumsily failed to accomplish this Spring with DOGE.
Per Politico:
OMB chief Russ Vought told House Republicans on a private call Wednesday that the administration will start mass reduction in force moves, or firings, of federal workers “in a day or two,” according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call.
Vought and President Donald Trump have both threatened to inflict maximum pain on Democrats during the shutdown as Senate Republicans hope to peel off additional Democrats in the coming days to vote for the GOP-led stopgap to end the standoff. A bipartisan group of senators also discussed several early off-ramp ideas on the floor earlier Wednesday.
In addition:
Vought also warned that money is about to run out for both the nutrition program for low-income moms and babies, known as WIC, and for pay for active-duty members of the military.
But while Republicans are behaving as though they have the upper hand, polling indicates Democrats are in a better position than one might think.
The Politics Of The Shutdown
Despite the administration’s all-out assault blaming Democrats for the shutdown, early polling shows the American people largely aren’t buying it.
Several polls taken in late September appeared to place slightly more blame on Republicans for the impending shutdown, including, per NBC News,
A New York Times/Siena poll taken in late September found…26% would blame Trump and Republicans, while 19% would blame Democrats, and 21% said they hadn’t heard enough to say.
A poll by Marist, PBS News and NPR in late September found that 38% would blame Republicans, while 27% said they’d blame Democrats.
In a Morning Consult poll taken in late September, 45% of registered voters said they’d blame Republicans in Congress for a shutdown, while 32% said they’d blame Democrats.
But now that the shutdown is upon us, there’s a sign that blame for Republicans may have actually increased.
A Washington Post poll conducted on Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown, found that 47% of U.S. adults blame Trump and Republicans in Congress, while 30% blame Democrats and 23% said they’re not sure.
The survey found that independents blamed Trump and Republicans over Democrats by a wide margin of 50% to 22%. And one-third of Republicans were either unsure who to blame (25%) or blamed their party (8%).
By hinging their shutdown demands on an issue favorable to them, plus the fact that Republicans control all levers of the federal government, Democrats made a bet that the American people wouldn’t blame them for standing up against Trump, even if it meant some short-term pain for many federal workers. And it appears that bet is paying off.
If this polling trend continues, look for emboldened Democrats to continue to stand strong. It just may be Republicans who start to seek an off-ramp. The political consequences of this fight are not just about the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential election. There is an election in just over a month, including a crucial one in New Jersey. Just yesterday, as part of his shutdown shenanigans, Russ Vought announced the administration was shutting down funding for the Gateway project, which includes construction of a tunnel under the Hudson River to alleviate congestion between New Jersey and New York City.
Vought has single-handedly given Democrats a new talking point to run on. As Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill made clear,
“The Trump administration is targeting New Jersey by gutting this funding,” she said in a statement. “As governor, I will fight tooth and nail to complete this essential infrastructure project for New Jersey. Jack Ciattarelli will not.”
The irony is that while Trump is thanking Democrats for giving him a prime opportunity to decimate the administrative state, it’s Democrats who should be thanking Trump for giving them the chance to show they’re willing to take a stand and actually fight for the American people, even in the face of political peril.
It’s what the American people have been hungry for. And Democrats are finally delivering.
Wait, I thought trump "never heard of" Project 2025? Another lie, Donnie? Shame on everyone that voted for this corrupt piece of shit.
Part of the problem with the perception of the state of health care in the country is that these writers, like many, and like the mainstream media, have picked up the habit of calling the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare," which is a pejorative term coined by the Repugs to disparage the ACA. How can I, in good conscience, support commentators who do not understand that, among folks like me, the use of any descriptor than Affordable Care Act displays a careless attitude toward history? The term "Obamacare" is an insult. It was meant to be an insult and it still is.