As we are writing this earlier in the week, it would appear that the government shutdown is about to end after almost six weeks.
Enough Democratic senators joined with Republicans in the Senate to achieve the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome a Democratic filibuster.
As we noted at the outset of the filibuster on October 1, we agree with the primary reason why the Democrats refused to go along with the GOP budget proposal: The GOP budget removes the subsidies for health insurance premiums that will make health insurance unaffordable for millions of low- and middle-income Americans, a back-door means of killing Obamacare.
Americans with private health insurance plans not affected by the GOP cuts should not feel smug. The loss of health insurance for millions of poor Americans will mean that emergency rooms in our nation’s hospitals, which already are under stress, will become even more overwhelmed because uninsured Americans no longer will have doctors to provide their routine care, leaving hospital ERs as their primary (and only) source of healthcare.
And for senior citizens who think that Medicare provides a safety net for them, our prediction is that Medicare will be next on the GOP chopping block.
However, the Democratic-led government shutdown was not the answer. The disruptions to our economy, air travel, and, especially, SNAP benefits for 42 million food-insecure Americans — who ultimately were nothing more than pawns for both sides — far outweighed whatever political points the Democrats were hoping to score via the shutdown. In our view, the only good thing to have come out of the government shutdown was that it highlighted the ineffective and geriatric leadership of the Democratic party, especially in the Senate, where it is obvious that the Old Guard — there are more Senate Democrats than Republicans who are 70+ — must make way for new voices.
