Those senators included Dick Durbin, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, John Fetterman, and Tim Kaine, as well as independent Angus King. All eight lawmakers are either retiring or won’t face another election for several years, making the alleged behind-the-scenes rationale for the crumbling stalemate even more asinine.
More than a dozen House and Senate Democrats expressed anxiety that actually preserving premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits through their shutdown demands could strip them of a winning issue in the coming midterms, reported The New York Times. Their secondary anxiety involved the powerful Senate filibuster, fearing that conservatives might actually bow to Donald Trump’s demands to ax the disruptive legislative tool.
“The political logic of the shutdown fight was inverted: If Democrats got the tax credits extended—if they ‘won’—they would be solving a huge electoral problem for Republicans,” reported the Times. “If Republicans successfully allowed the tax credits to expire—if they ‘won’—they would be handing Democrats a cudgel with which to beat them in the elections.”
