The Patriot Post® · The GOP Strategy for ObamaCare and the Shutdown

Democrats are responsible for what has now become the second-longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. And if Democrats drag it out for another eight days, it will surpass the longest shutdown on record, interestingly also set under Donald Trump during his first term.

During the previous record shutdown, the principal issue was Trump’s push for funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. House Democrats, led by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, balked at funding Trump’s border wall as they sought to enshrine Barack Obama’s executive order that effectively made the DACA program into law.

While a negotiation to reopen the government with a promise of working out a deal was eventually accepted, the end result was that Democrats successfully stymied most of the funding Trump had demanded for his border wall efforts.

Trump and Republicans took most of the political blame for the shutdown, as their poll numbers sank, with a majority of Americans faulting Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, whereas just over a third of the public blamed Democrats.

The result was a particularly stinging hit to Trump, who had made building a border wall one of the primary pillars of his campaign platform.

This time around, at least so far, Democrats are shouldering most of the blame. Indeed, Trump’s polling numbers have actually risen slightly, with a slim majority blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

The pressure to pass a clean continuing resolution to fund the government before negotiating new budget items has placed Democrats in an unusual situation, in which they are the ones making demands while simultaneously blaming Republicans for the government shutdown. What continues to make that a hard sell is that Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been holding votes to reopen the government, which Democrats continue to vote down.

The Democrats’ main issue is the demand that expiring COVID-introduced and expanded temporary ObamaCare subsidies be renewed indefinitely on the taxpayer dime. Should these “temporarily” expanded ObamaCare subsidies expire, millions of Americans on the ObamaCare exchange will suddenly see their premiums jump significantly.

The Leftmedia is ringing alarm bells, but it’s also true that at least some of the subsidy recipients are upper-middle-class early retirees, like the ones Minnesota Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar highlighted.

As much as Republicans hate ObamaCare and what it has done to the cost of healthcare in this country, they also know that it will be politically damaging for many of them to allow these subsidies to expire. This is what Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have been banking on to win this shutdown battle.

The concessions Democrats want and demand are negotiations to extend these ObamaCare subsidies before they vote to reopen the government. Meanwhile, Republicans, including Trump, are signaling that they are willing to negotiate with Democrats over this issue — after Democrats vote to pass a CR.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader Thune are well aware that capitulating to the Democrats’ demands to reopen the government will be hugely damaging to Republicans and will give Democrats, who are in the minority, a significant and entirely undeserved political win.

Thus, recognizing that allowing these subsidies to expire is off the table, politically speaking, what Republicans need to be preparing for is negotiating the conditions and reforms to ObamaCare they want to see. Reforms like restricting abortion coverage from the ObamaCare exchange and putting a hard income cap on eligibility to limit enrollment numbers, among other things.

While the existence of ObamaCare is frustrating, Republicans need to treat this as an opportunity to scale back the worst aspects of the law, including the mandate requiring insurance companies to cover specific medical services.

For this shutdown to be widely viewed as a win for Republicans, it requires them to hold the line on demanding that Democrats pass a CR before any negotiations take place on ObamaCare, but also to make it clear that they are willing to debate the issue after the government is reopened.