John Fetterman. Catherine Cortez Masto. Maggie Hassan. Jacky Rosen. Tim Kaine. Jeanne Shaheen. Dick Durbin. Angus King. These are the names of senators who are either Democrats or caucus with the party that caved to the pressure of the current government shutdown and voted to end the impasse. Time will tell just how impactful that decision is, but the fact is that the Democrats forced a shutdown and received almost nothing in return — they blinked first and erased their progress.
Despite trying to negotiate for weeks with regard to extending healthcare benefits for Americans in need and receiving a resounding show of support from voters over the course of the 2025 off-year elections, enough Democratic senators faltered and struck a deal that gave up healthcare to the wolves. Sure, the government will very likely reopen as a result, and back pay was secured for the federal workers either still on the job or furloughed. But back pay during a shutdown was already codified by a 2019 law signed by Donald Trump — the only reason the provision was specified in this case is that Trump himself was threatening to illegally withhold the pay. This example is instructive for our current reality. The old rules of striking deals to end a damaging scenario, especially as the minority party, are over. How can they persist when the president insists on not just accepting a shutdown, but enjoying it? How can they continue when Trump breaks almost every norm in the book, flouting laws along the way?
The Senate Democrats who voted to reopen the government were playing by those old rules, and they provided a variety of justifications. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said he wanted to secure protections for the many federal workers who live in his state, and the bill did include a section about restoring workers who were fully laid off by the Trump administration during the shutdown. Meanwhile, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said “it was the only deal on the table.” The implications of the breakaway senators were clear: This was a deal to end the pain and suffering of American people, and it needed to happen yesterday.
This would be a great argument, if not for the fact that striking a deal only shifts that suffering over to healthcare. The entire reasoning behind the shutdown was the Democrats fighting to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, which provide federal assistance to low-income Americans to pay for medical costs. Without those benefits, people could see their premiums more than double in price, an extremely damaging increase for many families. The new funding bill guaranteed a Senate vote on the subsidies, but even if a separate deal to extend them did come together, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to guarantee a vote in the lower chamber. In other words, the healthcare benefits might as well be gone already. Kaine said the Senate vote would put Republicans on the record about denying healthcare to Americans, as if the GOP has suddenly developed the capacity to feel shame. These are, after all, the same Republicans who clawed back funding for public media and extended tax cuts for America’s wealthiest people.
Another issue with making a lopsided deal lends credence to the Republican claim that the shutdown and the pain associated with it was Democrat-led. In the end, it was Democrats who came to the negotiating table, even though voters just rejected Republicans across the board in the recent off-year elections. Through their choices, voters said that they didn’t approve of the Republicans’ job in office this year. Given that momentum, the Democrats should have been more inclined to continue the fight and pile the pressure on the GOP. Republicans control the White House, House of Representatives and the Senate; the onus is on them to govern. But instead, enough Democrats capitulated, and now it looks as if a major fight was picked for nothing. Ending the shutdown without receiving much of anything in the way of policy gains only makes the Democratic Party look ineffective, even if most of their members don’t even support the deal.
Like it or not, we’re in an era of intense partisanship. The normal instances of Democrats and Republicans working together are much harder to come by and yield less effective results. Even though the shutdown looks to be over soon, the country can’t declare any sort of victory. Not only is this not a win for people struggling to pay for healthcare, nor the federal workers who might end up getting cut from their jobs anyway by the reckless Trump administration, there’s no winning for anyone — because the new funding bill lasts only until the end of January. The government is about to pick this fight again in two months’ time.
As the House readies a vote on ending the shutdown (a process that may very well be completed before this article is published), we should consider whether ending it is actually a win or just ignoring disaster. When the healthcare price hike takes effect, will those affected be happy the government is open?