Shutdown Schumer thinks Democrats are winning. 
For the second week in a row, Democrats are blocking roughly a quarter of federal spending, causing what Washington calls a government “shutdown,” unless Congress gives additional billions of taxpayer dollars to private health insurance companies via Obamacare. Republicans have never taken responsibility for Obamacare, and they should not start.
Obamacare offers junk insurance at outrageous premiums. In 2021, Democrats created temporary COVID-19 emergency premium subsidies for families earning $130,000 to $600,000 annually because even wealthy people struggle to afford Obamacare. These supposed “tax credits” are just checks the government sends to private health insurance companies. Thankfully, those temporary subsidies expire at the end of this year.
Democrats want to make those subsidies permanent because if they disappear, it would reveal that Obamacare’s excessive premiums and junk coverage are unpopular, as they have been from the beginning.
Public opinion turned against the first draft the moment Democrats introduced it in June 2009. After Democrats passed the “Affordable Care Act” by a single vote, voters gave them a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.
Congress has since repealed dozens of unpopular ACA provisions. The long-term care program? Gone. The death panel? Gone. “Every single one of the funding mechanisms to help offset the cost of the bill has been repealed,” says health reporter Julie Rovner. “The individual mandate is gone. Most of the industry-specific taxes are gone. The Cadillac tax … is gone.”
Dozens of other provisions were so unpopular that bureaucrats and judges rewrote them, in many cases subverting the Constitution by legislating without Congress.
Ignoring the ACA’s spending limits, the Obama and Biden administrations issued billions of dollars in illegal subsidies to millions of ineligible people, including members of Congress, and diverted funds from public health and elsewhere to insurance companies.
The Supreme Court ruled that the form of the ACA’s individual mandate and the substance of its Medicaid expansion were unconstitutional. Rather than leave the legislating to Congress, the court rewrote both provisions. It again rewrote the ACA — the court acknowledged “the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase” and then did the exact opposite — to let the IRS keep taxing and spending billions of dollars that Congress never authorized.
The ACA proved so unworkable and unpopular that it no longer exists. What we now have is “Obamacare” (Justice Antonin Scalia called it “SCOTUScare”), an illegitimate law that no Congress ever passed or could have passed.
Obamacare’s authors knew it would be unpopular. In 2013, ACA architect Jonathan Gruber admitted that Democrats structured the ACA by hiding its tax hikes within private health insurance premiums to hide its unpopularity. Had they made these measures transparent, he said, “The bill would not have passed.” Mr. Gruber infamously credited the ACA’s passage to “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Even the supposedly popular parts — the rules prohibiting exclusions or higher premiums for preexisting conditions — are unpopular. Former Biden economic adviser Michael Geruso has shown that those provisions are, in fact, limiting access to medications, top doctors and top hospitals at a cost to chronically ill patients of thousands of dollars per year. Polling consistently shows that when voters learn Obamacare reduces quality, even Democrats oppose it.
Obamacare then charges people double for junk coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that without Obamacare, most people could obtain better coverage at lower premiums. Most enrollees could buy “a comprehensive major medical policy” with “lower deductibles or wider provider networks” than Obamacare plans, at premiums “as much as 60 percent lower” than the lowest-cost Obamacare plans.
Democrats fear that if consumers see their full premium (i.e., the full cost of Obamacare’s regulations), they won’t voluntarily sign up for overpriced junk.

Democrats’ latest shutdown stunt exposes the Obamacare fraud
Billions flow from taxpayers to insurance companies while families pay more for less care and shrinking doctor networksFor the second week in a row, Democrats are blocking roughly a quarter of federal spending, causing what Washington calls a government “shutdown,” unless Congress gives additional billions of taxpayer dollars to private health insurance companies via Obamacare. Republicans have never taken responsibility for Obamacare, and they should not start.
Obamacare offers junk insurance at outrageous premiums. In 2021, Democrats created temporary COVID-19 emergency premium subsidies for families earning $130,000 to $600,000 annually because even wealthy people struggle to afford Obamacare. These supposed “tax credits” are just checks the government sends to private health insurance companies. Thankfully, those temporary subsidies expire at the end of this year.
Democrats want to make those subsidies permanent because if they disappear, it would reveal that Obamacare’s excessive premiums and junk coverage are unpopular, as they have been from the beginning.
Public opinion turned against the first draft the moment Democrats introduced it in June 2009. After Democrats passed the “Affordable Care Act” by a single vote, voters gave them a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.
Congress has since repealed dozens of unpopular ACA provisions. The long-term care program? Gone. The death panel? Gone. “Every single one of the funding mechanisms to help offset the cost of the bill has been repealed,” says health reporter Julie Rovner. “The individual mandate is gone. Most of the industry-specific taxes are gone. The Cadillac tax … is gone.”
Dozens of other provisions were so unpopular that bureaucrats and judges rewrote them, in many cases subverting the Constitution by legislating without Congress.
Ignoring the ACA’s spending limits, the Obama and Biden administrations issued billions of dollars in illegal subsidies to millions of ineligible people, including members of Congress, and diverted funds from public health and elsewhere to insurance companies.
The Supreme Court ruled that the form of the ACA’s individual mandate and the substance of its Medicaid expansion were unconstitutional. Rather than leave the legislating to Congress, the court rewrote both provisions. It again rewrote the ACA — the court acknowledged “the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase” and then did the exact opposite — to let the IRS keep taxing and spending billions of dollars that Congress never authorized.
The ACA proved so unworkable and unpopular that it no longer exists. What we now have is “Obamacare” (Justice Antonin Scalia called it “SCOTUScare”), an illegitimate law that no Congress ever passed or could have passed.
Obamacare’s authors knew it would be unpopular. In 2013, ACA architect Jonathan Gruber admitted that Democrats structured the ACA by hiding its tax hikes within private health insurance premiums to hide its unpopularity. Had they made these measures transparent, he said, “The bill would not have passed.” Mr. Gruber infamously credited the ACA’s passage to “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Even the supposedly popular parts — the rules prohibiting exclusions or higher premiums for preexisting conditions — are unpopular. Former Biden economic adviser Michael Geruso has shown that those provisions are, in fact, limiting access to medications, top doctors and top hospitals at a cost to chronically ill patients of thousands of dollars per year. Polling consistently shows that when voters learn Obamacare reduces quality, even Democrats oppose it.
Obamacare then charges people double for junk coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that without Obamacare, most people could obtain better coverage at lower premiums. Most enrollees could buy “a comprehensive major medical policy” with “lower deductibles or wider provider networks” than Obamacare plans, at premiums “as much as 60 percent lower” than the lowest-cost Obamacare plans.
Democrats fear that if consumers see their full premium (i.e., the full cost of Obamacare’s regulations), they won’t voluntarily sign up for overpriced junk.