On Sunday, seven members of the Senate’s Democrat caucus and Angus King, an independent senator from Maine who is also a member of the Democrat caucus, broke with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and voted to terminate the Democrat filibuster of a GOP-sponsored continuing resolution (CR) that will end the longest federal government shutdown in history. With the additional eight votes, Senate Republicans were able to reach the 60-vote minimum needed to overcome the Democrat filibuster and schedule a Senate vote on the House-passed CR, which would continue funding the federal government at the same levels as in the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on September 30.
Because under the original continuing resolution passed by the House, government funding would have expired in mid-November, the resolution was modified by the Senate to extend the funding for the entire federal government through the end of January. The modified resolution was then sent back to the House for final approval before being sent to the White House for President Trump’s signature into law.
Under the terms of the deal that Senate Majority Leader John Thune negotiated with the eight senators from the Democrat caucus, the Senate also voted to approve three full-fiscal-year funding bills approved by both the Republicans and the Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. They cover the operating budgets of the Veterans Administration, construction of military housing, the legislative branch of the federal government, the Department of Agriculture, including its food-stamp (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – SNAP) program serving more than 42 million Americans, as well as the cost of operating the legislative branch of the federal government.
Maine Republican Susan Collins, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that, “Under our legislation, all federal employees, including members of our military and Coast Guard, Capitol Police officers, Border Patrol agents, T.S.A. [airport] screeners, air traffic controllers — all will receive their back wages.”
REPUBLICANS EAGER TO END THE SHUTDOWN QUICKLY
When there were enough Democrat votes in hand to defeat the filibuster, Senator Thune argued on the Senate floor that the “people have suffered [from the shutdown] long enough.” Senate Republicans then lost no time in going through the necessary formalities and voted passage of the modified CR late Monday night by the same 60-40 filibuster-proof majority as they did on Sunday night.
The CR and the three new spending bills were then sent back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson wasted no time in calling back all of the members of Congress and scheduling a vote to approve the Senate deal to reopen the government as soon as Wednesday. But even if the government shutdown is ended by the weekend, it will still take some time for the airlines and airports across the country to return to normal operations. Speaker Johnson was expected to encounter little trouble in securing passage of the Senate-approved government spending bills, despite the continued opposition to them by Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and most, if not all, of the members of his caucus.
Jeffries declared defiantly that, “Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country, and the American people know it.” But as long as Speaker Johnson can keep his thin majority of House Republicans united in support of the package that Thune created in the Senate, there is no way that Jeffries and his Democrats can stop its progress towards Donald Trump’s desk for his signature into law.
Other Democrats were furious with their Senate colleagues for approving the deal to reopen the government because they failed to secure a promise from the Republicans to extend the expiring temporary Obamacare premium subsidies, which was Schumer’s main public justification for shutting down the government in the first place.
THE GROWING COSTS OF SUBSIDIZING OBAMACARE
The expanded Obamacare premium subsidies were originated enacted by Democrats through President Joe Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan as a temporary relief effort to enable people with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level continue to pay the monthly premiums for their Obamacare coverage during the Covid health emergency, and to give people with incomes above 400% of the poverty level access to the subsidies as well. Biden’s deliberately mis-named 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was another measure written and supported only by Democrats, which extended the enhanced Obamacare subsidies for three years, ending on December 31, 2025. In that respect, the looming expiration of the Obamacare subsidies is a crisis for Democrats entirely of their own making.
In return for their agreement to vote for the CR re-opening the government, the eight senators received a promise from Thune that he would schedule a Senate floor debate and vote on Democrat demands that the expiring enhanced subsidies be extended, without making any guarantees about the outcome. That was not enough to satisfy Arizona Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego, who declared, “I’m not voting for [the CT and] these [three] bills [because] that’s [just] a show vote.”
The seven Democrat senators who joined independent Senator King in agreeing to the deal were Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, and Jacky Rosen of Nevada. Because of the intense criticism the eight senators are now receiving from outraged Democrats, which they must have expected, it is not surprising that none of them will be up for re-election in next year’s midterm elections. Senators Shaheen and Durbin have announced that they intend to retire from the Senate after their current terms expire.
What the eight senators also got from Republicans in return for agreeing to re-open the government was a pledge to rehire the thousands of federal workers who were fired by the Trump administration since the start of the shutdown, and a promise that there will be no more federal firings until January 31, when the funding in the modified continuing resolution expires. In addition, all of the federal workers who were furloughed, as well as those who were required to keep working during the shutdown, will receive full back pay.
THE REBEL SENATE DEMOCRATS TOOK THE ONLY DEAL ON THE TABLE
According to Senator Shaheen, she and her colleagues were not given much of a choice by Thune and the Republicans. “This was the only deal on the table, [and] it was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA [Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare] tax credits,” she explained.
In an interview with Fox News, Shaheen said that by re-opening the government, “We’re making sure that the people of America can get the food benefits that they need, that air traffic controllers can get paid, that federal workers can come back, the ones who were let go, that they get paid, that contractors get paid, that aviation moves forward.” She also argued that re-opening the government was necessary to get the economy “moving again.”
However, many political observers believe that Schumer was using the Obamacare subsidies as a convenient excuse to pick a political fight with Trump and the Republicans to satisfy Schumer’s Democrat critics, who have harshly criticized him for supporting a virtually identical GOP-sponsored “clean” continuing resolution that kept the federal government operating in March.
Thune and Johnson argued that there was no need for Schumer to make approval of the continuing resolution to fund government operations after the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 contingent on the extension of the Obamacare subsidies, since the subsidies were not going to expire until January 1. Without the extension of the subsidies, which cost the federal government about $30 billion a year, many of the 24 million Americans with Obamacare coverage would see large increases in their monthly health insurance premiums starting in January 2026. This is especially so for those who are over the age of 50 with higher incomes (400% of the federal poverty level or more). The federal poverty level for a family of 4 is $32,150.
SCHUMER CHOSE TO FIGHT INSTEAD OF TAKING THUNE’S OFFER
Initially, before the 2025 fiscal year expired, Thune offered to schedule a Senate debate on extending the Obamacare subsidies, but only if Schumer agreed to allow the continuing resolution to keep the government open to be voted upon first. But Schumer and the Democrats refused Thune’s offer, and then voted more than a dozen times over the next five weeks to keep the government closed, which indicated that they were only using the expiring Obamacare subsidies as a convenient excuse to justify keeping the government closed.
Schumer’s real purpose in precipitating and then extending the shutdown was to demonstrate his willingness to keep fighting Trump, regardless of the pain it was inflicting upon tens of millions of Americans dependent upon suspended federal benefit programs, as well as hundreds of thousands of federal employees who were furloughed, and the other federal workers with “critical” jobs, such as air traffic controllers, who were required to keep working while going unpaid.
The political pressure on Democrats to end the shutdown and reopen the government became much more intense last week, after the Trump administration announced that it had run out of funds to keep providing food stamp (SNAP) benefits, and thousands of flight cancellations due to a growing shortage of air traffic controllers created scenes of chaos at the nation’s busiest airports.
The first indication that the political logjam created by the Democrats over the expiring Obamacare subsidies was breaking down was Schumer’s proposal last Friday to support passage of the CR to reopen the government in return for a Republican agreement to extend those subsidies for one year through the end of calendar 2026.
SCHUMER BLINKED FIRST
That was a significant concession from Schumer. He had originally demanded as his price for reopening the government a rollback of all of the cost-saving changes that Republicans had enacted to Medicaid and other federal health care programs in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which he signed into law on July 4. This was in addition to Schumer’s demand for the extension of the Obamacare subsidies, bringing the total estimated cost of his demands to $1.5 trillion over the next decade. As the shutdown continued, Schumer quietly dropped his demand for the rollback of the Medicaid changes, but continued to insist that the enhanced Obamacare subsidies be made permanent. But last Friday, in reducing his demand for the extension of the expiring Obamacare subsidies to just one year, Schumer indicated a new willingness to negotiate other changes to the Obamacare system with the Republicans going forward.
Another development that increased the pressure on Democrats to take the deal that Thune was offering them was a proposal by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, which was later endorsed by President Trump, to take some of the tax money that Democrats want to pay to health insurance companies to lower Obamacare premiums and redirect it to households with special tax-advantaged bank accounts. The money would be used to pay for out-of-pocket medical costs, such as hospital and doctor costs, with tax-free money. It would give consumers more choices and control over their healthcare expenses. However, under current law, consumer contributions to such Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are limited to no more than $3,300 a year.
Senator Cassidy, who had worked as a doctor and medical school teacher for 25 years before entering politics, now chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He made his proposal in the belief that the expiration of the Obamacare subsidies offered an opportunity to “move beyond our trench line, and let’s actually think creatively, and. . . give just a little bit [of current government healthcare funding] to find something which actually benefits the patient [and] may also get us out of this [shutdown] situation.”
When Cassidy introduced his proposal on the floor of the Senate last Friday, Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, who has a long record for focusing on healthcare issues, immediately expressed interest and asked Cassidy to provide more details.
GIVING HEALTHCARE MONEY TO PEOPLE INSTEAD OF INSURANCE COMPANIES
The next morning, President Trump expanded upon Cassidy’s proposal in a social media post, which said, “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the hundreds of billions of dollars currently being sent to money-sucking insurance companies” be sent directly to the American people so they can buy their own healthcare.
In a Sunday interview with CBS News, Kevin Hassett, who is the director of the Trump administration’s National Economic Council, confirmed that Trump had previously discussed the idea with Cassidy as a way to use the subsidies to give consumers with Obamacare more control over the kind of healthcare that they are receiving. As Hassett put it, “Why not take the people who have higher healthcare premiums and just mail them a check and let them decide?”
However, Connecticut’s Democrat Senator Chris Murphy criticized Trump’s version of Cassidy’s proposal by saying that, “This is, unsurprisingly, nonsensical. Is he [Trump] suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead?”
DEMOCRATS MISREADING MOST RECENT ELECTION RESULTS
At the same time, a Wall Street Journal editorial scolded Senator Murphy for his comments to the Axios news service, expressing his disappointment at the prospect that the government shutdown was about to end. Murphy said, “On the heels of the American people having rewarded Democrats for standing up and fighting, we surrendered without getting anything for the people we’ve been fighting for.” The editorial warned Democrats that they were misreading the signals that were sent by voters in Virginia and New Jersey last week by electing Democrat gubernatorial candidates, and that the Democrats should not react by doubling down on their partisan demands, which have hurt millions of Americans by disrupting the normal operations of the federal government.
The editorial concluded by quoting a statement Senator Murphy made back in 1913: “There is a time and a place to debate health care, just like there is a time and place to debate energy policy and immigration and education, [but] not when the funding of the federal government, and all the lives that are impacted by it, hang in the balance.”
Meanwhile, other Senate Democrats seemed to be more open to Cassidy’s idea for giving consumers more control over their healthcare spending, and said that they were eager to discuss it further with him.
Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden said, hopefully, that “Republicans are now talking about how they [also] want to go after big insurance companies. If they’re serious, I’m all in.” However, Wyden also cautioned that there are a lot of details about the proposal that will have to be worked out, and that was why Cassidy’s idea could not be implemented right away.
GIVING THE GOP A SECOND CHANCE TO REPLACE OBAMACARE
In 2017, during Trump’s first term as president, he and the Republicans were unable to pass a Senate bill that would have repealed Obamacare, in large part because they were unable to agree on a comprehensive substitute healthcare plan. Cassidy’s proposal suggests that Republican senators could use the promised debate on renewing the expiring Obamacare subsidies as a second opportunity to offer an alternative to Obamacare, which has clearly failed to fulfill the promises that its Democrat authors initially made.
When Obamacare was first passed by the Democrats in 2010, they promised that it would “bend the [healthcare] cost curve downward, and reduce average family health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year.” But many of the cost-containment provisions in the original Obamacare law have been repealed. That is why, 15 years later, average Obamacare family healthcare premiums have increased by more than 140%, while actual medical care costs over the same period have only risen by about 50%. As a result, the runaway costs of Obamacare policies have made its health coverage unaffordable for most middle-class families without the huge federal subsidies that are now set to expire.
Obamacare was supposed to eliminate the problem of too many Americans without access to adequate and affordable health care coverage. Instead, because of Obamacare’s much higher than expected premiums and deductible costs, and its restricted provider networks, only about 40% of the number of enrollees expected signed up for Obamacare policies. Many of those who did sign up for Obamacare coverage were already sick, which further increased the costs to the insurance companies of providing them with health coverage, which was eventually passed on to those who signed up in the form of higher monthly premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. As a result, today, in addition to the 24 million Americans now covered under Obamacare health plans, another 20 million are getting essentially free coverage due to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and 27 million Americans are still without health care insurance.
By expanding the number of poor people receiving health care through the Medicaid program, Obamacare was also expected to reduce the overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms from treating the uninsured. Instead, just the opposite occurred. Medicaid expansion significantly increased the use of emergency departments for hospitals across the country, particularly for non-emergency medical care.
TRUMP WAITED FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO ENGAGE IN THE DEBATE
During the first weeks of the shutdown, President Trump was mostly silent about it, while Republican congressional leaders said that they would not negotiate on Democrat healthcare demands until they agreed to reopen the government by ending their filibuster against the House-passed “clean” continuing resolution. But last week, as pressure increased on the moderate Democrat senators to reopen the government, Republican senators sent subtle signals that they could take a more flexible stance.
President Trump also indicated that he was running out of patience with the shutdown when he called for Senate Republicans to end it by voting to eliminate the Senate’s filibuster rule and by calling on them to stay in session until the government shutdown was ended.
Senate Majority Leader Thune had made it known that he opposed Trump’s suggestion that the shutdown be ended by the elimination of the filibuster, which protects the rights of Senate minorities. He fears that Democrats would take advantage of the absence of the filibuster as a check on the power of the majority party the next time they gain control over the Senate. But Trump’s late entrance into the shutdown debate did add to the general impression in Washington that after more than a month of political paralysis over the government shutdown, the public debate over the underlying issues was finally coming to a head.
Monday night’s passage of the continuing resolution to reopen the government, along with the three separate departmental spending bills, with the support of seven Senate Democrats, was hailed by independent Maine Senator King as “a win for the American people.” King, along with Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, had voted 15 times since the shutdown began to reopen the government. King argued that the length of the shutdown and the pain it was inflicting on the American people had changed the calculus for him and his colleagues, who were now willing to support the deal that the Republicans were offering.
REBELLING DEMOCRATS ARE PUTTING THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE FIRST
Fetterman, who has recently been vilified by his fellow Democrats for his continued adherence to traditional liberal values, his refusal to join in the criticism of Israel for its war of self-defense in Gaza in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas, and for his willingness to engage in honest and civil dialogue with Republicans, said of the government shutdown that things “should’ve never come to this.” He was referring to the hundreds of thousands of federal government workers who have been going without pay, and the people who depend upon government aid programs that have been shut down. “This was a failure,” Fetterman said.
King reportedly played a key role in the negotiations to reach the compromise with Thune, in which Democrats agreed to the reopening of the government in return for the promise of a Senate vote by the second week in December to extend the expiring Obamacare subsidies. King argued that it was time to reopen the government because “the shutdown wasn’t achieving its goal, and it was at the same time hurting a lot of people.”
The Maine senator also said Sunday that the deal with Thune guaranteeing a Senate vote on the issue was the best chance to keep the Obamacare subsidies from expiring. “Now we have a path forward. … We are closer to the possibility of work on the ACA tax credits for the people of this country than we were yesterday, than we were a week ago, two weeks ago, or a month ago.”
However, other Democrats were still deeply skeptical of Thune’s deal because they believed it to be unlikely that the majority of Senate Republicans would vote to extend those expiring Obamacare subsidies without making substantial changes.
Durbin, who was the only member of the Senate Democrat leadership to vote in favor of reopening the government, said, “This bill is not perfect, but it takes important steps to reduce their shutdown’s hurt. Now that Democrats secured these wins, it’s time for [GOP] Leader Thune to keep his promise to schedule a vote on the ACA tax credits in December.”
For Senator Kaine of Virginia, the concession that persuaded him was the Republican promise to reverse the firings of thousands of federal workers during the shutdown and their agreement to suspend any further federal firings for the duration of the new interim spending agreement.
In defense of his vote to accept the deal, Kaine argued, “This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019.”
However, the other Democrat Senator from Virginia, Mark Warner, said that even though he also welcomes the protections that the Thune package offers for federal workers impacted by the shutdown, “I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick.”
Senator Hassan of New Hampshire said that she became engaged early in the negotiations to reopen the government because, “I’ve heard from [New Hampshire residents] who can’t afford a doubling of their health insurance costs. I’ve also heard from families about the deep pain that the government shutdown has caused.”
Nevada Senator Cortez-Masto said that she was persuaded to break with her fellow Democrats to reopen the government because she wanted to “stop the pain” she saw in the faces of the people lined up at food banks that reminded her of the suffering during the Covid pandemic.
ANTI-TRUMP DEMOCRATS FEEL BETRAYED BY THEIR COLLEAGUES
But Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the other independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats, disagreed with King, and said, “To my mind,” the Senate passage of the legislation to reopen the government “was a very, very bad vote.” Sanders also warned that any retreat from Democratic demands for Republican concessions on health care would be “a policy and political disaster.”
Sanders and many other Democrats in the House and Senate said that they felt betrayed by their eight colleagues who threw in the towel too soon, prematurely ending their efforts to show the American people their willingness to use the power of the filibuster and the popular issue of sustaining Obamacare subsidies to keep fighting against Trump to the bitter end.
Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin said that Thune’s offer of a vote to extend the subsidies fell short of the action required to safeguard the threat to American health care.
“A wink and a nod to deal with this healthcare crisis later — with no actual guarantees — is just not enough for me,” Baldwin said.
Texas Democrat Greg Casar, who leads the House caucus of progressive Democrats, said that “accepting nothing but a pinkie promise [for a vote on Obamacare subsidies] from Republicans isn’t a compromise — it’s capitulation.”
Prominent progressive Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who has earned a reputation for honesty because of his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats when he thinks they are wrong, blamed the defection of the eight senators who broke the filibuster on Schumer, and called upon him to resign, saying that he “is no longer effective and should be replaced.”
That sentiment was echoed by the leaders of other progressive groups who see the reopening of the government with the help of moderate Senate Democrats, without any clear concession by the Trump administration to liberal demands, as a major political defeat.
“Caving now will teach Trump and Republicans that they can win any fight simply by threatening to cause terrible harm to regular people,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible.
A DEFEATED SCHUMER PROMISES TO KEEP FIGHTING
Even after it was clear that the filibuster had been broken, Schumer declared Sunday night that he was not giving up. “I will vote no, and I will keep fighting,” he said.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer declared, “This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot, in good faith, support this C.R. that fails to address the health care crisis.” But that was not enough to satisfy Schumer’s increasingly bitter critics, primarily from the progressive wing of his own party.
Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the progressive group called Our Revolution, suggested that Schumer should quit because he either betrayed his trust as the leader of the opposition to Trump in the Senate, or was just incompetent. If Schumer “secretly backed this surrender and voted ‘no’ [against the CR just] to save face, he’s a liar. If he couldn’t keep his caucus in line, he’s inept,” Geevarghese said.
However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries came to Schumer’s defense. He said “yes and yes” when he was asked by a reporter after the filibuster was broken, if he thought Schumer was effective and should keep his job as Senate leader. Jeffries also praised Schumer for leading many Senate Democrats in waging “a valiant fight” against Trump’s policies.
On the other hand, in an interview Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham, Trump said that Schumer had “made a mistake in going too far, in shutting down the government over the contrived issue of expiring Obamacare premium subsidies.” Trump added that while Schumer “thought he could break the Republicans, [in the end] the Republicans broke him,” by destroying the unity of Schumer’s Senate Democrats. Trump added that he felt “badly” about Schumer’s humiliation because “I’ve known him since he was a person who loved Israel, and now he’s a Palestinian… I’ve never seen a politician change so much.”
Trump also suggested that the underlying motive behind the opposition of the Democrats to the original continuing resolution that the House passed in September to keep the government open, was the $1.5 trillion in new federal spending they wanted for the thousands of “people that came [to the U.S.] illegally. . . to make sure they got good healthcare.” Trump also said that having the federal government pay for the healthcare of illegal immigrants would have “hurt other people’s healthcare.”
Later in the interview with Ingraham, Trump returned to Senator Cassidy’s proposal to divert some of the Obamacare premium subsidies into the hands of the American people, “instead of going to the insurance companies. I want the money to go to an account where the people [can use it to] buy their own health insurance, [and] they’re actually able to go out and negotiate [lower premiums for] their own [health] insurance [coverage].”
AFTER THE SHUTDOWN, AIRLINES WILL NEED TIME TO RECOVER
Trump also revealed his frustration over the growing chaos as the airlines continued to implement the order by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy last week to reduce the number of flights starting last Friday by 4%, and increasing each day, at the 40 busiest airports in the country.
The purpose of the flight cancellations was to reduce the pressure on the reduced number of FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) air traffic controllers who were still showing up to work each day, even after having missed their second paycheck since the shutdown started. It was necessary to maintain adequate safety margins for all commercial aircraft in flight.
The shortage of air traffic controllers and the canceled flights were having the greatest impact on travelers using the country’s busiest airports in Atlanta, Dallas, and Miami, as well as New York City’s LaGuardia and Chicago’s O’Hare.
In a social media post Monday, Trump demanded that “All air traffic controllers must get back to work, now,” and threatened that those who don’t will have their pay substantially ‘docked.’”
On the other hand, Trump recommended that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) reward every air-traffic controller who has not taken time off during the shutdown with a $10,000 per person bonus for keeping the country’s airways safe.
In response, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association issued a statement calling its members who are “report[ing] for duty to safely guide this country’s passengers and cargo to their destinations. . . unsung heroes [who] deserve our praise.”
Meanwhile, airline industry executives warned that even if the government shutdown is ended by this weekend, it will take some time for their disrupted flight schedules to fully return to normal. But fortunately, it now appears that there should be enough time after the shutdown ends for the industry to recover before the Thanksgiving holiday peak travel period arrives later this month.
A DEMOCRAT POLITICAL AND GENERATIONAL DIVIDE
It is not clear how long it will take for Democrats to heal from the divisions created between their progressive leaders and seven of their more moderate Senate colleagues who abandoned the fight with Trump over Obamacare subsidies to permit the government to reopen.
But it is clear that Democrats probably won’t allow Chuck Schumer to retain his title as Senate Minority Leader much longer after losing political control over eight of his Senate colleagues and his fight with Trump over keeping the government closed. Schumer’s political fate is also clouded by the recent poll finding that he is “the least popular Democrat Senate leader going back to at least the mid-1980s.”
Some have characterized the split in Democrat ranks over the reopening of the government as another sign of a generational split between the old guard of the party, represented by Senators Dick Durbin, age 80, and Jeanne Shaheen, age 78, who voted to reopen the government, and the new generation of Democrat leaders, represented by House Minority Leader Jeffries, age 55, who took over two years ago from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, age 85, who has also just announced her retirement from the House after completing her current term of office.
The current Democrat internal divide runs even deeper than the party’s leadership ranks. Senator Jean Shaheen’s vote to reopen the government without an agreement from Republicans to extend the expiring Obamacare subsidies is being publicly criticized by her own married daughter, Stefany, who is now running as a Democrat candidate for an open House seat in New Hampshire next year on a healthcare-based campaign platform.
Stefany admitted in an interview that she agrees with her mother about the need to reopen the government, but not at the cost of losing the subsidies for Obamacare premiums, and that they were unable to come to an agreement over the issue after a recent private discussion of the issue.
But even though Stefany thinks that her mother voted for the Thune deal because she believed that it was the right thing to do, she is speaking out against her mother’s vote because “All I can do is stand up and say what I believe is right.”
