Eight Democratic Party senators voted with the Republican majority to end the shutdown and fund the U.S. government, despite the Trump administration’s plan to nearly double the cost of healthcare for millions of working-class people.
The media is presenting the vote of the eight Democratic Party senators as a defection from the leadership of the Democratic Party, whose refusal to vote with the Republicans led to a 42-day-long federal government shutdown. It is likely, however, that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress knew that they had failed with the government shutdown tactic and quietly supported the eight senators in their vote with the Republican majority. Several of the eight are not running for reelection.
The government shutdown created immense hardship for 1.2 million federal workers who have been without a paycheck for almost six weeks. It has also led to cutbacks in SNAP (food stamp) benefits for more than 42 million people.
The Democratic Party leadership had other options than to shut down the government. There are 213 Democrats in the House of Representatives, 47 in the Senate and 23 Democratic governors. They could have used their positions and their vast resources to call for mass mobilizations of the people to show the overwhelming opposition to Trump’s billionaire agenda, which is an all-out war against all working-class people.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently promoted the possibility of a nationwide general strike. This appeal gained support from millions of people all over the country. The Democratic Party leadership could have made this a powerful call for mass action, but instead they chose an entirely passive tactic: the defunding of the federal government.
Moreover, the Democrats did little to explain to the population what the stakes were in this battle. Most people in the country could not have explained why the government was actually shut down. But Democratic Party politicians failed completely to articulate to the public the goals and purpose of the shutdown. Controlling healthcare premiums is an important issue for the vast majority of people in this country. But despite this winning message, the public was not galvanized in a meaningful way around the issue. In this sense, the Democrats’ refusal to vote for the funding of the federal government should be considered as one more performative act rather than an engagement in genuine struggle against the Trump agenda.
It is critically important to remember that in 2009, the Democrats had control, by a large majority, of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and had just won the presidency following the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Instead of providing a national health plan, or single-payer health plan, or Medicare for All, the Democrats announced that all of those progressive options were completely off the table. Instead, they insisted that a reorganized healthcare plan would require everyone to enroll with private capitalist insurance companies, and that the government would provide subsidies to offset the premiums that low-income people would be required to pay. The Democrats in 2009 could have done whatever they wanted because they had the votes, and it was under those circumstances that they adopted the current healthcare system, which allows insurance companies to dramatically increase the premiums that individuals have to pay.
Voting ‘No’ to stop Trump’s budget may have appeared at first to be a bold stand against health care cuts. But if this were truly a bold stand, the next step would have been to rally the whole country to demand the government be immediately reopened, with the painful cuts removed. In passively sitting on their hands, gambling that the ongoing closure would hurt the Republicans electorally more than them, and then finally capitulating (with nothing to show for it), the whole endeavor stands exposed as a cynical maneuver. It was not the urgent fight to save health care that it was made out to be. That movement, though, still needs to be built in every town and city across the country, as the health crisis will now surely deepen.
Feature image: U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Credit: U.S. Senate.
