[00:00:00] Welcome to Discourse where we cut through the noise and make sense of the chaos. I'm your host, Wayne Unger. I'm a law professor and former Silicon Valley nerd, and I've spent years breaking down complex topics into digestible takeaways. And on this podcast, we'll take a deep dive into the pressing issues, shaping our world in law, politics, technology, business, and more.

No echo chambers, no corporate influence, just thoughtful analysis and respectful civic dialogue because understanding different perspectives isn't just important. It's necessary. Let's get started. All right. Welcome back to Discourse. I'm your host, Wayne Unger, and we are recording today's episode on Wednesday, October 29th at nine 30 in the morning.

And of course things may have changed since. On today's episode, we are discussing the federal government shutdown. Yes. The one that lingers and the one that I predict will become the longest one in history. We'll talk about how we got here, why Congress can't seem to get its most basic constitutional [00:01:00] duty done of passing a budget and what it's going to take to reopen the government. We'll also dive into the history of the government shutdowns in general, explain the positions on both sides, the Democrats and the Republicans demands, and we'll take a deep look at the Affordable Care Act, which is what the Dems have put on the forefront of this government shutdown.

Specifically, we'll look at the Republicans and how they undermined the cost structure of the Affordable Care Act by repealing the individual mandate and why that matters now more than ever, as Americans are about to face massive premium increases once open enrollment opens. Now, spoiler, I predict this government shutdown is gonna drag on into November.

And Congress is quite simply playing politics with people's lives, and I will criticize them for that, and I will criticize both the Democrats and the [00:02:00] Republicans here

but first, before we begin with the government shutdown story, the main story of today, I just wanna play a clip of. I cannot believe this of Marjorie Taylor Green, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green speaking on cnn. So let's hear from her now. I'm one of those that gets real tired of political drama when it's not actually solving a problem, and this is such a crisis that it, I'm, I'm willing to say, okay, everyone, we have to do something about this.

It shouldn't be something that we. Dangle the American people or military pay or, or all of these things. We shouldn't be dangling them back and forth. We have to fix it. Uh, it's very, uh, what are you hearing from your constituents right now and do you have any regrets about voting for that short term continuing resolution that spending bill?

Hmm. Thank you for that. Question. Number one, I am a Republican and I support the president. Um, I was very vocal about, I didn't wanna vote for a cr. I [00:03:00] want to pass our appropriations, that's our constitutional duty, and I wanna bring that taxpayer dollars back to my district. I work hard on that, so that was important to me.

But I support the president and I voted for the cr. Um, number two, what am I hearing from my constituents? It's great. We track all the calls that come into my office. About 60% of the calls coming in right now are calls of support and saying, yes, health insurance is a crisis. They're telling us stories about how they're already paying $2,000 a month with $10,000 deductibles.

I'm getting phone calls from people that are saying if the ACA tax credits expire, they aren't gonna be able to have health insurance. They're going to have to drop it. But I'm hearing from people on both sides, people already on the ACA and people that are already getting crushed by high health insurance premiums.

Now I never would've thought I would agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene, but actually I agree with her in full, that entire clip, I think she is correct and I [00:04:00] support what she said on that clip. So let's explain why. Why pigs are flying because Wayne Unger is now agreeing with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green.

So the shutdown has entered its, I dunno, 27th day or something like that, making it one of the longest in history. And I think it's going to, as it continues into November, it's going to become the longest government shutdown in ever. Federal employees are bracing for missed paychecks. Thousands have already filed for unemployment benefits and the system is beginning to stress and crumble. SNAP benefits, for example, the supplemental uh, nutrition assistance program.

Those benefits are set to run out by the end of this month in a few days time. If Congress doesn't act, and that's millions of Americans who rely on food assistance, they are about to lose access and they'll go hungry. Putting [00:05:00] extraordinary demand on food banks and free food programs, and perhaps most critically open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act marketplace begins in just a few days.

Again, I think November one. Without the subsidy renewals that the Democrats are demanding, millions of Americans are about to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket. So we'll explain that dynamic here shortly. Now. Donald Trump, the President of the United States, of course, has been remarkably silent during the shutdown, except to say that Congress needs to figure it out and.

That is true. Congress does need to figure it out, but Donald Trump being the leader of the Republican Party, could put his hand on the scale and force people to come to some sort of resolution. Now, with all of that said, let's get to the main story. Let's start with the basics.

How did we get here? Well, the federal government shut down. Is because [00:06:00] Congress failed to pass a budget. Again. And instead of doing their job and passing an actual budget, Congress has been kicking the can down the road with what are called continuing resolutions or CRs for short. A continuing resolution is exactly what it sounds like.

It's a temporary funding measure, a stopgap measure that keeps government running at the current spending levels for a short period of time. It is Congress saying we can't agree on a budget right now, so let's just keep things as they are for a few weeks or a few months. And here's the thing, continuing resolutions have become the norm.

They're not supposed to be because the Constitution is clear. Congress holds the power of the purse. It has the responsibility to appropriate the funds out of the , US Treasury, and the federal government is supposed to operate on an annual budget that Congress passes. Before the start of [00:07:00] each fiscal year, which begins on October 1st, but Congress hasn't passed a budget on time in years.

Instead, they continue to pass continuing resolution after continuing resolution. After continuing resolution, punting the problem down the road, avoiding the hard decisions, avoiding that political compromise that is necessary and basically refusing to do the job that they are elected to do and the Constitution tells them they need to do.

So. Let me be clear about something in particular. I think continuing resolutions are a cowardly way to govern. There are cop out. They allow Congress to avoid making tough choices about spending priorities about what programs to fund, and how much about what the American people actually need versus what the special interests want.

CRS perpetuate the status quo without any thoughtful consideration of whether that status quo is working, whether funds should be diverted [00:08:00] from one program to the other, or whether we should, for example, end a program and invest that money elsewhere. And you know what? I am not alone in this criticism, scholars, policy experts, and even some members of Congress themselves have called out the reliance on continuing resolutions as a failure of governance, just like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in that clip on CNN that I played for you at the top of this episode, it is lazy.

It is irresponsible, and it is a, my eyes. A violation of their constitutional duty, but here we are. Congress couldn't even pass a continuing resolution this time. Why? Well, because both parties have dug their heels in on certain demands and neither side is willing to budge. So the government remains shut down.

Federal employees get furloughed or forced to work without pay essential services, [00:09:00] grind to a halt. National parks close. Millions of Americans are left wondering when their elected officials are going to get their acts together.

Before we dive into the specifics about this shutdown, let's talk about the history of government shutdowns in general and why they happen in the first place. Government shutdowns aren't new. They've been happening since the 1970s. So in that way, you could argue that they are a relatively recent phenomena in the United States.

When Congress changed the rules about how government operates when the funding runs out in the 1970s, that is, they changed the rules. Before 1980 when Congress failed to pass appropriations bills. Federal agencies could continue operating under what was called implied spending authority. Basically, the government kept running even without a formal budget, but then the Attorney General under President Carter issued an [00:10:00] opinion saying that that was not lawful.

The opinion concluded that when funding lapsed. Agencies must shut down except for the activities that are necessary to protect life and property. Since then, we've had numerous shutdowns. Some lasted a day or two or three others like the shutdown in December of 2018 to January of 2019. Under Trump's first administration lasted 35 days, and right now that is the longest one in the books.

Why do government shutdowns happen? Well, it comes down to political leverage and partisan gridlock and perhaps the hyperpartisan news cycle that we have here in the United States. The federal budget is a reflection of priorities. It's a statement about what the government values, where it wants to invest, [00:11:00] what programs it funds, and how much it is willing to spend when the two parties disagree fundamentally about those priorities, and when neither side has the votes to pass a budget on their own.

We end up in a stalemate as we're seeing now. Sometimes one party tries to use the threat of a shutdown as leverage to extract concessions from the other party. They say, well, we won't vote for a budget or continuing resolution unless you agree to fund this program. Or they'll say things like, we won't vote unless you defund that program.

It's purely hostage taking, plain and simple, and the American people are the ones who lose, and it almost always backfires because shutdowns are politically unpopular. Voters hate them, myself included. They see them as evidence that Washington is broken and doesn't work, that politicians [00:12:00] can't reach consensus.

But then again, the bases of both parties. Perhaps enjoy them because they don't want to see concessions, they don't want to see wins on the other side. And you know what? The voters who complain about the partisan gridlock, I think they're right. Shutdowns are evidence that Washington is broken. So how did this particular shutdown happen?

Let's, let's walk through that. As I mentioned, the fiscal year begins on October 1st. Congress is supposed to pass a budget. Or at the very least, appropriations bills that fund the government before that date. But of course, they didn't do that here, and so they sought a continuing resolution. Now that continuing resolution passed the House of Representatives, but it's being held up in the United States Senate.

Republicans and Democrats started negotiating this continuing resolution to keep the [00:13:00]government funded while they worked out a longer term deal, but that's where things fell apart. Democrats made it clear that they would not support any continuing resolution or budget that didn't include the renewal of the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.

These subsidies, which were expanded under the American Rescue Plan in 2021, and extended by the Inflation reduction Act, are set to expire at the end of this year, 2025. Without those subsidies, millions of Americans are going to see their health insurance premiums increase dramatically. And we're talking about premium hikes of say, 50%, perhaps a hundred percent.

In some cases, and even more than that, Democrats are saying, we will not vote for any funding measure that doesn't extend these subsidies. It is, apparently, a red line for them. Republicans, on the other hand, have [00:14:00] their own demands. They want significant cuts to domestic spending. President Trump, for example, says, we are going to attack

the Democrat programs, which seems silly because no program is partisan like that. Certainly there are priorities and perhaps he just wants to attack the Democrat priorities, but a lot of those priorities actually help the American people. So attacking those programs is directly hurting the American people.

Now they want an increase in funding. They being the Republicans want an increase in funding for border enforcement and immigration detention. Here's the thing, they already got that in the previous bill that they passed weeks and weeks ago. Remember that one big, beautiful bill? Well, that increased the funding for border enforcement and immigration.

Now the Republicans are flatly refusing to extend the ACA subsidies, calling them welfare for the middle class, and arguing that subsidies are too expensive and [00:15:00] unsustainable. Okay, so you have the Democrats demanding subsidy renewal, and you have the Republicans refusing. Neither side is willing to compromise the result.

Well, we have no continuing resolution. We have no budget, so the government shuts down. Now let's talk about what each side is demanding and what their talking points are, because I think it's important to understand here. Democrats are framing their demands around healthcare access and affordability.

They're saying that without enhanced subsidies, millions of Americans will lose their health insurance or be forced to pay premiums that they simply cannot afford. And they're pointing to the data that shows subsidies have led to record enrollment in the ACA marketplace, more than 20 million people are covered under ACA plans.

They're arguing that letting the subsidies expire would be a [00:16:00] disaster for those families, for those working families, for small business owners, for early retirees who rely on the marketplace for coverage. Now, of course, the marketplace isn't perfect. It can use significant improvement, and certainly the plans available under the marketplace could be better.

At the very least, there's a cost issue. The Democrats are arguing that this is about fairness. They're saying Republicans gave massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy. Why can't we extend subsidies that help ordinary Americans afford healthcare? Which many on the left say is a basic human right, and they're not wrong about the impact.

If the subsidies expire, premiums are set to increase and as premiums go up, enrollment will drop, people will lose coverage, that is what the congressional budget Office, the CBO has projected. Meanwhile, [00:17:00] Republicans are framing their opposition around fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility.

They're arguing that enhanced subsidies are too expensive, costing tens of billions of dollars per year, and that the federal government simply cannot afford to keep paying for them is especially given the national debt. And this argument has a little bit of merit, but it falls flat if you consider it the massive spending

increases and new programs that were present in the one big beautiful bill. Such as dedicating approximately $300 million to Trump's properties via FEMA funding. You heard that correctly? There is a provision in the one big beautiful bill that appropriated money to FEMA to pay for things related to Trump's properties.

They're also arguing that subsidizing health insurance for people who earn up to 400% of the federal poverty level. Which by the way [00:18:00] is over $125,000 for a family of four is essentially welfare for the middle class there. The Republicans are saying, why should taxpayers subsidize health insurance for people who can afford to pay it themselves?

Well. The thing here is the sticker price is what is unaffordable, and Republicans are pointing to the fact that the enhanced subsidies were always meant to be temporary. They were passed as part of the pandemic relief to bring healthcare costs down during times of high unemployment. They were extended, yes, but there was never a commitment to make them permanent, according to the Republicans.

Republicans are also demanding spending cuts in exchange for any federal funding deal. They want to reduce domestic spending across the board, yet also account for the increases in spending that they enacted in the [00:19:00] one big beautiful bill. Republicans also wants to cut funding for social programs, for environmental initiatives, and for education.

The thing here is it appears that the Trump administration is just doing this single-handedly without the approval of Congress. So that kind of falls in my eyes on deaf ears, even though I argue that the Trump administration is unlawfully cutting those spending programs because that is contrary to Congress's directive.

Furthermore, Republicans are arguing that the federal government is simply too big, that it spends too much and it needs to be reigned in. Of course, republicans want more money for border enforcement. That has been the priority of their party for years, and Donald Trump has put it at the forefront of their party's platform.

They want additional funding for more border patrol agents, for detention facilities, for deportation operations. But the Republicans already funded that [00:20:00] increase in spending for immigration and border enforcement in the one big beautiful bill. So where does that leave us? Democrats won't vote for a budget without the ACA subsidy renewal.

Republicans won't vote for a budget that includes the subsidy renewal. And so here we are in a government shutdown, a stalemate with no end in sight. Now, in order to understand this and kind of this rise in healthcare premiums, let's talk about the Affordable Care Act in more detail. Because to understand why the subsidy issue is so critical, we need to understand how the ACA was designed originally, and how the Republicans have spent more than a decade trying to undermine it.

See the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was signed into law by President Obama in 2010. It was the most significant overhaul of the American healthcare system in decades. The [00:21:00] ACA has several key components. It expanded Medicaid to cover more low income Americans. It created health insurance marketplaces where individuals and families could shop for coverage if they didn't get it through another method like their employer.

Perhaps a small business chose to seek healthcare plans via the marketplace. Instead of buying them on the ordinary commercial market, it also prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher premiums based on preexisting conditions. One of the key protections in now in the American healthcare system, and it required most Americans to have health insurance or to pay a penalty, this was called the individual mandate.

So I'll repeat 'cause that's the most important part for this story. The Affordable Care Act required most Americans to have health insurance, or they were to pay a penalty, and this was called the [00:22:00]individual mandate. Now, the individual mandate was absolutely critical to the Affordable Care Act, cost structure.

Let me explain. Insurance works based on risk pooling the idea that you have a large group of people paying premiums into a system, into a pool, and those premiums are then used to pay out the healthcare costs of people in the group who get sick or injured. So people. Policy holders pay premiums into a pool.

That pool is then used to pay out claims. For the system to work, you need a balanced risk pool. You need healthy people who don't file many claims to subsidize the cost of people who need more care. And if everyone. Is in, who is in that insurance pool is sick and filing expensive claims, then premium skyrocket because there's not enough money coming in to cover the costs going out.

And because we have a private healthcare system in [00:23:00] the United States, these for profit insurance companies need to make some form of profit. This is where the individual mandate came in. By requiring most Americans to have health insurance or to pay a penalty, the ACA, incentivized healthy people to buy coverage.

It was, if you've ever heard of the analogy, the carrot and the stick, it was the stick. It brought healthy people into the risk pool, which helped keep premiums lower for everyone because the spend out of that risk pool for all of the claims filed is now divided amongst more people paying premiums. So the cost is shared amongst more people bringing premiums down for everyone. Without the individual mandate,

healthy people, especially young, healthy people, have less incentive to buy insurance. They might think, well, I'm healthy. I don't need insurance. I'll save the money. And when healthy [00:24:00]people drop out of that risk, pool premiums go up for everyone else because now the pool is skewed toward people who need more care.

This is called adverse selection, and it's one of the biggest challenges in health insurance markets. The architects of the Affordable Care Act understood this. They knew that the individual mandate was essential to making the law and the program work. Without it, the insurance marketplace would struggle, but Republicans hated the individual mandate.

They saw it as government overreach, as the government forcing people to buy a product that they didn't want, and they immediately challenged it in court. The case that made its way to the United States Supreme Court was called the National Federation of Independent Business versus Sebelius, and it was decided in 2012, in that case, the [00:25:00] challengers, the National Federation of Small Businesses, argued that the individual mandate exceeded Congress's authority under the Constitution.

More specifically, they argued that Congress couldn't force people to engage in commerce to buy a product, in this case, health insurance, and then regulate that commerce the Supreme Court in a five four highly contentious decision written by the Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the individual mandate, but it's important to understand how he viewed it.

Here's the twist. The court didn't uphold it under the commerce clause as Congress has the role to regulate interstate commerce. Now, the Obama administration argued that it was lawful under the commerce clause, but it also argued in the alternative that it was lawful under the tax and spend clause in the Constitution.

Instead, the court, in an opinion [00:26:00] by the Chief Justice said the mandate, the individual mandate was constitutional as a tax. This is what Roberts wrote. He said that while Congress couldn't use its commerce power to compel people to buy insurance, it could use its taxing power to impose a penalty on people who chose not to buy insurance.

The penalty, as Roberts reasoned, functioned as a tax and that you need not call a tax, a tax for it to be a tax. Because it functioned as a tax, because it was collected by the IRS. It generated revenue for the United States, which was then used to fund subsidies, and Congress has broad authority to impose taxes.

Roberts also emphasized that the penalty was relatively modest, less expensive than actually buying health insurance, and that it was only [00:27:00] triggered if somebody chose not to buy coverage. In other words, it wasn't really forcing anyone to do anything, it was merely a disincentive. Not forcing their hand.

It was simply imposing a financial consequence for choosing not to have insurance. And the court's decision was a huge victory for the Obama administration and for supporters of the Affordable Care Act. It meant that the law could go forward with the individual mandate intact, and the fundamental cost structure of the Affordable Care Act remained in place, but the Republicans didn't give up.

They continue to spend years trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act repeal and replace. You might recall, it became the rallying cry for the GOP. They voted dozens of times in the house to repeal the law, knowing full well that Obama would veto any repeal bill. Now, when Trump was elected in[00:28:00] 2016 and the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, it looked like the ACA was doomed.

Republicans finally had enough control and power to repeal it, but we know what happened here. Republicans couldn't agree on a replacement plan, so that repeal and replace mantra fell on deaf ears. It was just repeal. The Republicans tried multiple times to pass a. Repeal and replace legislation, but they couldn't get the votes.

And you might recall Senator John McCain's famous thumbs down vote on the Senate floor. That was the moment it became clear that a full repeal was not going to happen. So what did the Republicans do instead? Well, if you can't repeal the whole thing, then chip away at it.

They went after the individual mandate. In 2017 as a part of Trump's tax reform bill, the Tax Cuts and [00:29:00] Jobs Act, during his first term, the Republicans zeroed in on that individual mandate. They, in fact, zeroed out that penalty for not having health insurance. So essentially the penalty still exists except it's just $0.

Now, they technically didn't repeal the mandate. It's still on the books. By reducing the penalty to $0, they effectively eliminated it. And this is where things get critical. By eliminating the individual mandate penalty, Republicans undermined the entire cost structure of the Affordable Care Act. Let's think about this for a second.

Healthy people no longer had a financial incentive to buy health insurance, thus people were removed from that risk pool because the penalty was gone. So many healthy people, especially younger people, dropped their coverage or chose not to enroll in the first place. What happened? The risk pool in the [00:30:00] Affordable Care Act marketplaces well, they got sicker premiums started to rise. Insurance companies facing higher claims costs and fewer healthy enrollees raised their prices to cover their potential losses to cover those claims. And this is exactly what critics of the mandates repeal predicted would happen, and it did. Now let's talk about how insurance marketplaces work, because I think it's important to understand the financial mechanics here.

An insurance marketplace, whether it's the ACA marketplace or an employer-sponsored plan, or any other type of insurance, operates on a simple principle premiums paid by the enrollees, the policy holders, must be sufficient to cover the claims filed by those enrollees, plus the administrative costs and the profit margin for the insurer.

Which of course we can criticize the astronomical salaries of, say, the CEOs of the insurance companies. But that perhaps is a separate episode. [00:31:00] This whole thing is a balancing act. Insurers project, how much they will pay out in claims based on the health of their enrollees, and then they set the premiums accordingly.

If you have a lot of healthy people in the pool, claims are lower. Premiums can be lower if you have a lot of sick people in the pool, claims are higher and premiums have to be higher in order to cover those costs. This is why age matters in health insurance pricing.

Older individuals on average use more healthcare. That's kind of an objective fact. They file more claims, so premiums for older enrollees are higher than premiums for younger enrollees. The ACA puts some limits on this. It said that insurers could not charge older enrollees more than three times what they could charge younger enrollees.

This is called age [00:32:00] rating. It was designed to make insurance more affordable for older people, specifically baby boomers. And it also meant that younger people's premiums were higher than they would have been in an unregulated or a less regulated market. That's another reason why the individual mandate was so important and brought younger and healthier people into the market to balance out the higher costs of older enrollees, specifically the baby boomers. And when the mandate went away, younger people dropped out. The age mix in the marketplace shifted older, and the premiums went up with less people paying into that risk pool. Now add to this another factor, the aging baby boomer generation. I've mentioned them here and there, but let's dive deeper.

Baby boomers. So the generation bef born be between 1946 and 1964, give or take, are now in their [00:33:00] well older decades, I'll put it that way. Many of them are on Medicare, which kicks in at the age of 65. But those who are under 65 and not yet eligible for Medicare often rely on the ACA marketplace for health insurance coverage.

Boomers in particular because of their age, use more healthcare. Again, as one ages Objectively, we know that one seeks more healthcare. They may have more chronic conditions, they may need more prescription drugs. Older generations have more hospitalizations. All of this drives up those claims across the board.

As the boomer generation continues to age, the volume of healthcare claims continues to increase. This isn't Just affecting the Affordable Care Act marketplace. It's an issue across the entire healthcare system as a whole, but it's particularly [00:34:00] acute in the ACA marketplace because the marketplace includes a disproportionate number of older in enrollees.

So we have a perfect storm that essentially has been created. The individual mandate is gone. So healthy people drop out the risk pool. Is getting older and sicker. Boomers are driving up the claims volume and the premiums are rising to cover all of this. And for those who participate in the risk pool, you now have to pay more to cover those additional claims.

That's where the subsidies come in. The American Rescue Plan Act passed in 2021, was a response to the COVID to 19 pandemic. Yes. It expanded the ACA subsidies significantly, and it made subsidies available to more people, including those earning over 400% of the federal poverty level who previously were not eligible, and [00:35:00] it increased the size of the subsidies, making coverage more affordable across the board.

Fast forward. The Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, extended these enhanced subsidies until the end of 2025. These subsidies have been a lifeline for millions of Americans. They kept premiums affordable. Even as underlying costs have risen, they've allowed people to stay covered, even as the individual mandate penalty disappeared.

These subsidies are set to expire at the end of this calendar year, and without them premiums are set to go up because we are no longer subsidizing the cost structure here. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums for a benchmark plan in the Affordable Care Act marketplace will increase by an average of 75% if the subsidies expire.

For some people, the increase will be even higher.

So let's put some actual numbers to this. Imagine you are currently [00:36:00] paying $200 a month for health insurance because of the subsidy. Without the subsidy, you might be paying six or $700 or even more than that per month. For many families, that's simply unaffordable, especially as inflation continues to hurt American families and their wallets across the country.

They'll drop their coverage and they'll choose to go uninsured, essentially rolling the dice and hoping that they don't have a major medical issue, which could, in our country, bankrupt them. And we'll see the uninsured rate in this country rise for the first time in years. This is what the Democrats are trying to prevent.

This is why they're demanding the subsidies be renewed as a part of any budget deal, and Republicans for their part are saying, we can't afford it. The subsidies cost too much. And besides this whole problem is because the Affordable Care Act was badly designed in the first [00:37:00] place. But here's the irony of it all.

Republicans are right the, that the Affordable Care Act is struggling financially. But the reason why it's struggling is because they sabotaged it. They repealed the individual mandate, which was the mechanism designed to keep the risk pool balanced and premiums lower or more stable. And now that they're pointed to the rising costs as evidence that the Affordable Care Act doesn't work, they are a major reason why

there are rising costs to begin with. It's like breaking someone's car and saying, see, I told you that car was a piece of junk. Well, you caused it. You made it a piece of junk. So let me be clear about something. I'm not saying that the ACA is perfect. It's not. The law has flaws and it can use improvement.

The marketplaces have problems and they can use improvement. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about the cost of coverage, [00:38:00] about the adequacy of provider networks, about the administrative burden on insurers and consumers, about the salaries, for example, of the top executives of these insurance companies.

But the fact remains that the Republicans fundamentally undermined the ACA's cost structure by repealing the individual mandate, and now they're refusing to provide the support in the form of subsidies. That's necessary to keep the coverage affordable in the absence of that mandate. So where does that leave us?

Well, we find ourselves, as we know, in a government shutdown, Democrats are demanding the subsidies, renewal Republicans are refusing and neither side appears to be budging. What? What is it going to take to reopen the government? Well, ultimately, one side is gonna have to compromise. Somebody has to come to the table on either side or on both sides for that matter.

Either the Democrats are gonna have to agree to a funding deal without the subsidy renewal or a lesser subsidy, [00:39:00] or the Republicans are gonna have to agree to a deal that includes a subsidy renewal. But here's what I think is going to happen. I predict that this shutdown is gonna drag into November.

Granted, it's, it is just right around the corner. And I think the reason is because the Democrats are betting that the political pressure on the Republicans will become unbearable once Americans start to feel the real world consequences of the shutdown and the subsidy expiration. Think about it. Open enrollment for the ACA marketplace begins in just a few days, and when people log on to healthcare.gov to shop for coverage, they're going to see premiums that are double or triple what they've paid last year. And that's gonna be the massive shock leading to more phone calls into congressmen and congresswoman's offices, to senator offices, and people will express their utter disgust [00:40:00] for this increase in price.

People are gonna be outraged and they're going to want to know why their premiums went up so much. Well, I just explained why. Democrats are betting that when Americans see those premium increases, that they're going to blame Republicans for refusing to extend the subsidies. So essentially they're just holding out until the sticker shock hits and that political pressure will force the Republicans to the negotiating table.

But it's not just about health insurance premiums. There are other consequences of this government shutdown that are gonna hurt the American people. SNAP benefits, for example, the food assistance program in this country, well, they are, SNAP benefits are going to run out by the end of this month, and that means millions of low income Americans, many of them children, are going to lose access to food.

People are gonna go hungry. Food banks are gonna be overwhelmed, and the images of people [00:41:00] lining up for food assistance are going to dominate the news. Federal employees aren't getting their paychecks, most of them, and that means thousands of families are going to miss mortgage payments, car payments, utility bills.

We're going to see the economic effects of the shutdown cascade throughout the economy and consumer spending is going to drop because there simply is less money because people aren't receiving their paychecks. Local businesses that rely on federal employees as customers are going to struggle because no paychecks and all of this is gonna create the political pressure.

Voters are going to demand that Congress do something. Democrats are calculating that they can hold out longer than Republicans. They think that once Americans feel the pain of the shutdown, even though they won't admit it this way. The hunger, the financial stress, the skyrocketing insurance premiums that the Republicans will cave and come to the table.[00:42:00]

Maybe they're right. Maybe the Democrats are right. Maybe the Republicans will decide that the political cost of the shutdown is simply too high, and they'll agree to extend the subsidies in exchange for some face saving concessions on spending cuts. Or maybe the Republicans will hold the line. Betting that the Democrats will get blamed for the shutdown because they're the ones who refused to compromise.

And you see the massive talking point campaign by the Republicans trying to blame the Democrats as the holdouts. And while it is true that the Republicans need Democrats to join them in the Senate to reach that 60 vote threshold, to pass something in the Senate. While that is true, it's the Republicans who are in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House.

So if the Republicans want to actually [00:43:00] govern, then they ought to ask the Democrats at the table to figure out how do we get some of the Democrats to vote in favor to get this bill passed? And that is what they are not doing. Either way, I think we're in for a long, painful standoff, and in the meantime, real people, real Americans are suffering.

So let me say this as clearly as I can. This shutdown is a disgrace, it's a failure of governance. And it's a failure of Congress to fulfill their constitutional duty to fund the United States government. Congress has one fundamental job in the Constitution to appropriate the funds out of the treasury.

That's it. Pass a budget, keep the lights on, make sure federal employees get paid. Make sure critical services continue and they can't do that. Instead, they're [00:44:00] playing political games. They're using the livelihoods of federal workers as bargaining chips, as, uh, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene mentioned during that clip, the food security of low income families being used as a bargaining chip, the healthcare access of millions of Americans as bargaining chips to this partisan standoff.

And yes, I will admit that the Democrats are holding out to make this better in the long run. Feeling that short term pain, but I think that that short term pain is irresponsible for the Democrats and the Republicans to cause. That is not how governing is supposed to work. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

Continuing resolutions are cop out. They allow Congress to avoid making those hard decisions to reaching compromise. But you know what's even worse than a continuing resolution? A shutdown. And a shutdown is Congress throwing up its hands and saying, you know what? We simply can't agree, so we're just gonna let the [00:45:00] government grind to a halt, and the consequences fall on ordinary Americans, the members of Congress, well, they still get paid during a shutdown.

Their health insurance doesn't change. It's quite good actually. They're fine. It's the federal employees who have to figure out how to pay their bills without a paycheck. It's the families who rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table to feed their children. It's the Americans who are about to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket.

Congress is playing politics with people's lives. I think it's shameful. Now, I want to be fair here. Both parties share the blame for the dysfunction in Washington. Democrats and Republicans both engage in this brinksmanship, and both use the threat of a shutdown as leverage. Both prioritized political messaging over actual governing.

So the blame is to be directed at both parties, but in this [00:46:00] particular case, I think the Democrats have the stronger argument, the enhanced ACA subsidies are keeping millions of Americans insured, allowing them to pay those emergency medical costs If something happens and doing so will not bankrupt them. Without them, premiums are gonna have, are going to become unaffordable and people are going to lose coverage.

That is what will happen. Republicans bear responsibility for this mess because they are the ones who repealed the individual mandate in the first place. They broke the Affordable Care Act cost structure. They created the conditions that made the enhanced subsidies necessary, and now they're refusing to provide those subsidies perhaps, perhaps.

So that they can point to the Affordable Care Act and say, see, it's not working. You shouldn't vote for the Dems. If Republicans left the individual mandate in place, we likely [00:47:00] wouldn't be in this situation. Premiums would be more stable, the risk pooling would be more balanced, and the need for those enhanced subsidies would be less acute.

But they didn't, they repealed the mandate as a way to undermine the Affordable Care Act without having to pass a full repeal that they couldn't do. And now we're living with consequences. So what happens next? Well, as I said, I think the shutdown is gonna continue into November, and I think Dems are going to hold out until the political pressure on the Republicans become so unbearable that it forces them to the table.

And I think that pressure is gonna come from ordinary Americans who are about to see health insurance premium spike, who are going to lose access to food assistance, who are going to feel the economic effects of federal employees not getting paid. Those calls that Marjorie Taylor Greene mentioned her office is getting, those are going to double or triple.

Volume. Eventually I think Republicans are gonna cave and I think they're [00:48:00] going to agree to extend the subsidies probably for one, maybe two years in exchange for some spending cuts or other concessions that allow them to claim some sort of victory. In the meantime, real people are going to suffer, and that's on Congress.

That's on the men and women who are more interested in scoring political points and playing up this hyperpartisan ship than in actually governing. And before we wrap up, let me add one more thought. This shutdown and the fight over the ACA subsidies is part of a larger debate about the role in government.

In healthcare. Democrats generally believe that the government has a responsibility to ensure that Americans have access to affordable healthcare. They support programs like Medicaid, like the ACA subsidies and like Medicare. They think healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Well, most on the left.

Republicans generally believe that government should have more limited role in healthcare, and that they support market-based solutions. They think that people should [00:49:00] be responsible for their own healthcare costs. They worry about the fiscal cost of government programs and the long-term sustainability of programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

These are fundamentally different visions about what government should do and what responsibilities government should have, and those differences aren't going to be resolved anytime soon. Here's the thing. Whatever your vision of government, whatever your philosophy about healthcare policy is, we can probably all agree that shutting down the government and letting millions of Americans lose access to affordable health insurance is not the answer.

We can also agree that not continuing SNAP benefits as an example and letting millions of Americans go hungry is perhaps unethical. Plain and simple. We need our elected officials to govern, to make tough choices, to compromise. That's what they were elected to do. That's [00:50:00] why voters sent them to Washington to find solutions that work for the American people, even if those solutions aren't perfect.

And right now Congress isn't doing that. They're simply failing, and the American people are paying the price, many voters continue to send the same people to Washington that cause these problems. So that's where we are. Governments shut down. No end in sight. We know what the Democrats demand.

We know what the Republicans are refusing to do. Millions of Americans are about to feel the consequences if they haven't already. I'll be following this closely, of course, and I'll keep you updated as things developed. In the meantime, if you're one of the millions of Americans affected by this shutdown, whether you are a federal employee, a SNAP recipient, or potentially someone shopping for health insurance on the ACA marketplace, I'm, I'm sorry, you deserve better than what they're giving you.

Thanks for listening to Discourse. I'm Wayne Unger. Stay informed, stay engaged.

That's it for today's [00:51:00] episode of Discourse. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the conversation. You can catch future episodes of discourse wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this discussion insightful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who value thoughtful analysis over the noise.

You can also join the conversation by visiting discourse paw.org and following me on x and blue sky at Prof Unger for more insights and updates. Until next time, keep thinking critically, stay curious, and engage with respect. We'll see you soon.

Discourse is a commentary podcast for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute professional advice or legal advice. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts and any guests. And do not reflect the views of any employer, institution, or organization. This podcast is non journalism and does not adhere to journalistic principles.

It offers analysis, opinion, and discussion on current events, but should not be relied upon as a news source. Listeners should consult qualified professionals for legal or otherwise expert advice specific to their situation. Thanks for [00:52:00] listening.