Fans of The Simpsons have known for decades the meaning of the German word schadenfreude, taking pleasure in someone else’s pain. Many conservatives felt that emotion on Sunday night, when the agreement by eight Senate Democrats to end the “Schumer shutdown” and reopen the federal government prompted widespread gnashing of teeth among the left.
Beyond taking pleasure in Democrats’ misery, conservatives, not to mention elected Republican leaders, should use the sturm und drang on the left as a cautionary tale. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised Democrats a vote on extending enhanced Obamacare subsidies when the government reopens — a fair enough request. But if Republicans decide to give Democrats the votes to enact the measure, they will split their political base just like Democrats have done.
Left’s Uncontrolled Rage
On the one hand, I understand the anger among the left at the Democrat Party for reopening the government without getting substantive concessions on lawmakers’ chief demand, i.e., an extension of the enhanced subsidies. On the other hand, I don’t understand the focus on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for somehow not keeping the eight Senate Democrats in line to prevent them from cutting a deal with Republicans.
What exactly do these leftists think Schumer could have done to these rank-and-file lawmakers who decided to defy their own leadership? Lock them out of their Senate offices? Send them to their rooms without dinner? Tell them he will have New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani arrest them if they travel to the Big Apple, just like Mamdani wants to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu?
The dear Lord gives all of us free will, and a handful of senators exercised their prerogatives to act as they saw fit for their constituents. Schumer had no more power to stop those eight Senate Democrats from cutting their deal than Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., then the Senate majority leader, had to stop three Republicans from tanking “repeal-and-replace” legislation eight years ago.
If leftist Democrats really want to blame Schumer, they should ask him why he decided to have the enhanced subsidies expire this year, rather than before the 2024 election, which would have given Democrats an issue to run on during last year’s campaign. Or they should ask why Schumer ever thought that Republicans, whose defund-Obamacare shutdown ended with a whimper a dozen years ago, would ever give Democrats a far better deal to end the shutdown than Republicans themselves got in 2013. But asking either of those questions would require challenging Democrat delusions — so good luck waiting for that to happen.
Obamacare Extension Would Destroy the Conservative Coalition
That said, the infighting among Democrats illustrates what will happen if Republicans give them the votes to enact an extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies. The policy reasons are myriad: It will spend $350 billion (plus interest) at a time when the federal debt exceeds $38 trillion. Much of that spending will go toward fraud, as the Congressional Budget Office and others have noted.
But in addition to taking political ownership of Obamacare — a measure that congressional Republicans have opposed for a decade and a half — a bailout would also contain taxpayer funding for plans that cover abortion and transgender medical interventions many Americans find objectionable. It would eviscerate the pro-life movement and directly contradict perhaps the most effective political ad of last year’s campaign: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you.”
Republicans do need a positive agenda, one focused on the economy and affordability. On health care, those solutions could involve a greater focus on enhancing coverage portability by building on the achievements of the first Trump administration. But throwing money at the problem and/or bailing out Obamacare won’t cut it, not least because Democrats will always promise more of other people’s money than any conservative proposal.
When the vote on the enhanced Obamacare subsidies comes around, Republican lawmakers should keep the wailing of Democrats over the past few days in mind. Rather than splitting their own electoral coalition over 1) bailing out Obamacare, 2) increasing funding for plans that cover abortion, and 3) helping to fund the transgender agenda, they should follow both the policy and the politics to just say no.
