Taking a cue from Vice President JD Vance, congressional Democrats refused to budge from their position that any spending bill to keep the government operating must contain protections for Americans’ health care. President Donald Trump and Republicans, desperate to protect tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, refused to compromise, leading to a federal government shutdown at midnight Wednesday.
Vance argued last year, when Republicans were on the other side of a government shutdown debate, that such a situation provided a perfect opportunity to “get something beneficial for the American people.” Democrats have taken that idea and run with it, looking to get the most important thing—health care for the millions of working Americans set to lose coverage thanks to Republicans’ and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
That bill, while carving out tax exemptions for the ultra wealthy, such as big breaks for private jets, slashed nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and brought to an end numerous ACA subsidies that helped nearly 4 million Americans afford health insurance.
Those cuts are set to devastate families and numerous cash-strapped states, such as Alabama, and will all but eliminate health care options in several rural communities. In Alabama, the cuts would drive up marketplace insurance costs by an estimated 93 percent and result in around 130,000 Alabamians losing coverage. They would also increase uncompensated care by 18 percent, essentially assuring that Alabama’s many hospitals, which are already barely surviving, would close.
The Trump administration has implemented a $50 billion nationwide rural hospital plan to offset some of those costs, but it wouldn’t come close to fully paying for all of the losses.
With Americans becoming increasingly more aware of the looming health care crisis, Democrats have taken what has proven to be a popular stand. National polling by multiple firms has shown that the American people, by and large, will blame Republicans more for a shutdown. Additionally, the idea of Democrats fighting to save millions of Americans’ health care is particularly popular.
That is particularly true when compared with the Big Beautiful Bill, which has grown increasingly unpopular since its passage in July. In virtually every poll since, the bill has been wildly unpopular and the overwhelming majority of Americans believed, rightfully, that it aided the wealthy at the expense of the poor and working class. It has also helped erode any goodwill Trump and Republicans had with the American public immediately following last November’s election. Recent polls have found Trump and his foundational policy ideas, such as the economy and immigration, surprisingly unpopular with pretty much every demographic.
The current shutdown will do little to assist Trump and Republicans. It is the first shutdown since 2018, during Trump’s first term. That shutdown, when Republicans were also in control of the House, lasted 35 days and cost taxpayers $5 billion.
