Why Are Democrats Voting to End the Shutdown? Here’s What Guided Their Thinking

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Senate Democrats held together as long as they could. But with the government shutdown hitting the six-week mark, it was clear that a number of them were out of patience with the longest government closure in history. Airport workers were going to work for free. The federal bureaucracy was in a mothballed state of neglect. Working-class families were going hungry. Their biggest policy goal was not even on the table on the current vote and the best they were hoping for in the short term was a clawback for some of the federal workers who were shown the door. And no one in Washington even seemed to be talking.

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So, despite the objections of their party’s Leadership team, eight of those who caucus with Democrats emerged Sunday night with a deal that would—in theory—move to shut down this shutdown in exchange for a promised but uncertain vote in the Senate on extending Obamacare subsidies once the lights got restored.

The Senators that agreed to the deal are those who have the least incentive to fear the Democratic base. The delegations from purple-states New Hampshire and Nevada made up half of the cohort of the logjam breakers. (President Donald Trump lost New Hampshire with 48% of the vote last year while he won Nevada with 51% of the vote.) Two lawmakers are retiring when their terms end and will never again face voters, while three others won’t be on a ballot again until 2030.

Yet there’s still the question of what brought about a deal now, 40 days into the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Democrats had made extending Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year the cornerstone of their negotiations. The loss of those subsidies is expected to send potentially millions of Americans off their insurance plans, while driving up costs for those still under coverage. Most voters seemed supportive of the gambit. Many Republicans did not love the look of spiking health care costs heading into next year’s elections and were desperate for an off-ramp that no less than Trump seemed open to paving.

So what changed? 

The flight delays stand to get worse, and Thanksgiving loomed

Roughly 5,000 flights were canceled over the weekend and another 1,400 were iced on Monday as federal aviation officials set to scale back the traffic at the nation’s busiest airport. Officials insisted it was in the name of public safety, as the lack of pay for air traffic controllers was exacerbating existing staffing shortages. Even still, it has been lost on few that the GOP administration has been nakedly partisan in trying to pin the shutdown on Democrats. Several airports around the country have declined to broadcast a video recording of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats. The Transportation Security Administration is part of Noem’s umbrella, and roughly 61,000 of her 64,000 TSA employees are also working without pay.

One of the toughest travel peaks is just down the line. AAA Travel last year estimated 80 million Americans traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday last year and delays at airports were certain to snarl already anxious travelers. Thanksgiving this year is Nov. 27, and Triple A has yet to release its figures amid the uncertainty in the skies.

SNAP funding delays were causing real harms

The Trump administration was still digging in to oppose sending out food assistance to roughly 42 million Americans on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, even as the deal seemed cleared on Monday.

Millions of low- and middle-income families were left unsure how they will pay for groceries. Typically their EBT cards got recharged at the start of the month but it’s now been 10 days since that benefit was shut off for roughly one-in-eight Americans. For Democrats, the costs to families was getting tougher to justify as a bargaining chip.

If approved, the Senate deal keeps those dollars flowing through the end of September. The negotiators recognized the costs to those most vulnerable Americans were real at coming at the expense of a political fight over health insurance costs for millions of other Americans.

The election is over, and the results have hints for Democrats

Last Tuesday’s elections were being watched closely as a sign of where voters were with Democrats’ shutdown strategy. The decisive across-the-board wins would suggest big support for the party when compared to the alternative. Even Trump attributed “the shutdown” to playing a “big role” in GOP losses.

But this was not a universal view. The different style of Democrats who won created a Rorschach test of sorts of what it all meant. While the marquee race was democratic socialist Zorhan Mamdani’s win as New York’s youngest Mayor in more than a century and its first Muslim in the role, two more pragmatic nominees prevailed in races for Governor of Virginia and New Jersey. That pair, both women and former roommates, did not wrap themselves in partisan labels.

For the gang of eight who are breaking with Democrats, the message they appear to be taking from the elections is that voters are looking for those who get things done. And in this deal, they see a window to claim a win—especially for the millions of federal workers who saw their jobs saved, the Congressional Budget Office’s budget that survives, and a headline that can claim victory. On top of that, Senate Democrats say they are guaranteed a vote on Obamacare subsidies at some point.

So with plenty of gnashing from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the two New Yorkers watched Sunday as the Senate found 60 votes to allow the debate to get started on a way out of this mess. Schumer’s typically loyal lieutenant, the retiring Sen. Dick Dubin of Illinois, joined the breakout Democrats.

The Democratic National Committee seemed displeased with the move but unable to stop it. “As this vote moves to the House, I stand with Democratic leadership as they refuse to rubber stamp the full-scale Republican assault on Americans’ health care and I am proud of the majority of Senate Democrats who opposed this vote,” DNC Chairman Ken Martin said Monday.

In intra-party diplo-speak, that was about as fierce a burn as can come from the party’s central committee.

By and large, polls showed Republicans bore the blame for the shutdown by double digits and Democrats earned credit for chasing Obamacare subsidies. Both sides saw merit in sticking with the strategy, and heading into the weekend it seemed destined to keep in stasis.

In fact, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, all but signaled that his colleagues were fine being stuck in park for a while longer. “It would be very strange for the American people to have weighed in, in support of Democrats standing up and fighting for them,” Murphy told The Associated Press last week, “and within days for us to surrender without having achieved any of the things that we’ve been fighting for.”

Now much of the party finds itself in exactly that position.

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