The Democrats were furious Monday over eight senators who caved to support a deal to end the government shutdown that does not include the Affordable Care Act subsidies their party had spent weeks fighting for.
The offending lawmakers include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and independent Senator Angus King, who claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits. Their capitulation comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted for weeks that he wouldn’t promise them a vote on anything, and even if he does follow through with a vote, it’s unlikely such a measure will pass the House.
Democratic lawmakers slammed their colleagues for forfeiting health care coverage for an estimated 5.1 million Americans by 2034 and increasing premiums across the marketplace.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against the deal while speaking before the Senate Sunday. “If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are gonna see at least a doubling in their premiums in the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for health care. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?”
“We ensured a vote!”
Bullshit. Even if the vote happens, it won’t pass, and even if it did, Trump could veto it. This was the one chance to save the ACA and also to really damage Trumpism. The shutdown was devastating to the GOP and the Dems would have won eventually just like in 2019, but instead these 8 traitors are handing the country over when they’ve just had their only real opportunity to fight this administration.
Fuck them all. Every single one of them should be ejected from the caucus.
They held out for 40 days just to torture ppl who need benefits
Yep and Leadership sit this up so it look like it was 8 traitor. These were all safe seats. Its goddamn conspiracy. Fuck Chuck.
And this is why we need to shout down and muppet that blindly parrots “vote blue no matter who.” These folks rely on the flawed assumption that electing Democrats is the fastest way to fight authoritarianism. But if the party is actually just a scam? If it’s just controlled opposition? You have no great options at that point. At that point your only option is to ignore the fake opposition and push for a new left wing party, even if it takes you 20 years to implement. Voting for a captured opposition party is little more than an act of masturbation.
They held out for 40 days just to torture ppl who need benefits
Maybe when you lose your healthcare you will understand why they did it.
Edit:
Edited the post to include what I responded to, because it seems people miss the context.
I clearly support the attempt to save ACA. Not the 8 senators that quit.Are you implying I don’t already need the affordable care act? Because I do. They acted like they wouldn’t fucking cave for 40 days then these 8 go and say meh fuck it who cares. wtf was it all for then?
The sunk-cost fallacy isn’t a winning argument, here. But the goal of protecting healthcare for regular people is a strong enough goal that it doesn’t need sunk-cost. These 8 could have protected their people but jammed-out.
They’re saying that the fact that they folded makes all the harm of the last 40 days meaningless. These 8 motherfuckers waited until extra harm had been done before signing off on the harm caused by getting the ACA.
This outcome is the worst possible. If they’d been spineless 6 weeks ago they’d still be traitors, but this is somehow even worse.
They basically treated it like every U.S involved conflict in recent history.
Commit tons of resources, suffer massive casualties, give up and go home declaring an empty victory.
And if the vote happens and passes and people get to keep their health care, will you apologize to all these democrats and admit they made the right decision?
This is absolutely not going to be what happens or it would’ve happened already
I think raising attention to this issue is the only thing Democrats could hope to accomplish. And they did it with the shutdown.
Now if Republicans do not hold a vote, or if they vote against it, there will be much more negative attention given to them.
I believe this funding only goes until Jan 31st. So if they don’t pass the healthcare in December, the government will just be shut down again.
What are you smoking? 8 Democrats have now cosigned a poison pill of throwing millions of people off healthcare in addition to everything trump is doing with the government.
Not a single concession from republicans. This outcome is only slightly better than just approving the republican budget and there will be another budget fight in 3 months that republicans will be more prepared for.
And what is keeping the government shutdown going to do that is different? They would still lose their healthcare!
Do you honestly believe the Republicans were going to cave on this issue?
They were because they need to pay ICE agents etc.
You sure they weren’t still getting paid? This article was from a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s changed since then.
Somebody pointed out last night that it’s no coincidence that it was exactly 8 senators and conveniently none of them are up for reelection in 2026… It’s enough to make one wonder which other senators also need to be primaried even though they flew under the radar.
It also won’t be a coincidence when they’re seen sailing their new yachts.
This was setup no way leadership didn’t know about this. It fucking show and they should pay for this betrayal.
Only 13 Dem senators are up for re-election in 2026, so I don’t think its that surprising that none of the 8 that voted for this aren’t.
I would say it’s more surprising that
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Any Dems caved at this point before at least seeing how the showdown between Trump and the courts would play out.
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There have been a lot of fingers pointed at Schumer for his lack of leadership in uniting the party. While I think there’s more than enough to criticize him for (being so shitty about Mamdani, especially during the shutdown being the first and foremost thing I would say shows poor leadership), I have to say I’m holding off immediately jumping to that conclusion.
It may be true, and even though I don’t really trust Schumer in many ways, the reason I hesitate to immediately jump on the bandwagon in this case is because of the specific Democrat that was the first to start parroting this narrative, and has continued to parrot it as loudly as possible since last night.
I read this article around midnight last night:
Sunday’s deal was brokered by Democratic Senators Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both from New Hampshire, and Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, said a person familiar with the talks.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, voted against the measure.
Many Democrats on the Hill watched the deal unfold with displeasure.
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” wrote U.S. Representative Ro Khanna on X. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?"
I hesitate to trust Schumer because it seems like he has reached a point in his career where he (along with many establishment Dems) is too quick to sell out core values. However, I do think Schumer honestly may have held those values at one point in his career, but became too comfortable with the status quo.
On the other hand, Ro Kahnna has no values. He was never supposed to be trusted in the first place, and when I see the media refer to him as a progressive it makes my fucking blood boil. He exists to serve the interests of Peter Thiel, and his own interests/Palantir investments, by keeping Thiel rich and happy.
Broken clocks and what not, so he could be right in this instance. However, knowing how Theil uses the media to manipulate public opinion, and this sneaky mother fucking snake in the grass, being the first to already have that narrative ready to go from the jump, and the media being so quick to help him spread it, makes me suspicious as hell.
What reason did those 3 senators possibly have to suddenly cave, and broker that deal on Sunday fucking night after we went into the weekend with the very public back and forth on SNAP?
And then for the other 5 to join them voting for it. It’s clear where Fetterman’s loyalty lies, but the other 7 Democrats that voted for this seriously couldn’t just wait for the public to know that the circuit court sided with the original ruling to pay SNAP in full? Why is that?
Only 13 Dem senators are up for re-election in 2026, so I don’t think its that surprising that none of the 8 that voted for this aren’t.
There are only 48, right? And of those 13 are up for re-election. That’s better than 1 in 4. To look at 8 defectors and none of them be up seems… Highly coincidental at best.
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Extortion works
MAGA tried to hold the Dems hostage, demanding our health care as ransom, and if we didn’t comply, the richest in America would LITERALLY starve the poorest in America, to death.
Instead of caving, the Dems held out, and won a MASSIVE election victory, then, with all their new political capital, they voluntarily flushed it down the toilet, and gave MAGA everything they wanted, and got absolutely nothing in return.
Schmuck Schumer has to go, and every cowardly Democrat must be primaried. A handful need to be brought back (Bernie, AOC, Frost, Crocket, et al), but the rest can go.
I’m so sick of these weak, cowardly Democrats. No wonder MAGAs hate them, and bully them. They have no self-respect at all. Truly pathetic.
For those of you American’s who might want to contact these Senators to give them some feedback:
https://www.cortezmasto.senate.gov/contact/connect/
https://www.fetterman.senate.gov/contact/ https://sengov.com/pennsylvania/john-fetterman/
https://www.kaine.senate.gov/contact
https://www.rosen.senate.gov/email-jacky/
https://www.hassan.senate.gov/contact
https://www.shaheen.senate.gov/contact/contact-jeanne
I’ve already tried yelling down the empty hallway once. Sleazebag Durbin sent me back a nice form letter thanking me for expressing my opinion. It was the most pointless thing ever. I doubt my words were even read by an intern.
Fucking I hope we all fucking die I hate this shitncountry fuckungshitfucki assbolefuck
Did something happen or do you mean just generally sick of this bullshit?
I am sick of this. It feels like 90% of what we do is lose and we are about to lose a lot thanks to these fucking people.
I hope these fuckinf cowards pay dearly for this shit fuck their worthless fucking lives.
Which one of these senators has a primary opponent?
My understanding is none, because they chose members who are already retiring for this
Fetterman isn’t a Democrat anymore. He will likely get voted out next term, regardless.
King is not a Democrat.
Masto is barely a Democrat, but that’s what her constituents wanted.
Shaheen is retiring.
Durbin is retiring.
Rosen and Kaine have not announced retirement, so they are interesting. Rosen just won a very close race in Nevada, so she either tried to appease conservative voters there or thinks she is gone anyway. No idea what Kaine is thinking.
Rosen and Kaine have not announced retirement, so they are interesting. Rosen just won a very close race in Nevada, so she either tried to appease conservative voters there or thinks she is gone anyway. No idea what Kaine is thinking.
Never discount the possibility of blackmail, too.
At this point we should assume every establishment politician at every level of government is being blackmailed.
IOW, dems told them to cave so the party wouldn’t keep looking less popular, they weren’t going to be reelected anyway.
That might be true, or it might not be true, but they have brains and made their own decisions. Looking spineless is no way to improve party image.
My guess is that it’s because the FAA started shutting down private flights as more and more ATCs stopped working without pay. As soon as the billionaires were affected by the shutdown, the dems capitulated.
