Democrats: It’s more of a health care fight than a shutdown

Democrats are betting that voters won’t remember the government shutdown a year from now, but will remember that the opposition party fought for reducing health care costs.

After years of positioning themselves against government shutdowns as a matter of principle, Senate Democrats are holding their position far more firmly than during a similar fight over immigration protections in 2018. On Friday evening, they will surpass the length of that year’s three-day Trump-era shutdown.

The gap in government services will be painful, and Democratic senators and aides report constituents are already peppering them with questions about the shutdown.

But for a party relegated to the minority in a Washington deluged by President Donald Trump’s flood of executive power exercises, picking this fight was more or less their only option left to get people to pay attention.

“If it seems about health care, then this will have been worth the effort. It’s unknown,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told Semafor. “People hate shutdowns. And I hate shutdowns. So why are we doing it? It’s because, essentially, the whole Obamacare healthcare success we have is being unraveled.”

Democrats are a footnote in the first nine months of Trump’s presidency, sidelined on negotiations that hacked away at the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and cut out of any negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. They have little say on Trump’s nominees, and Republicans dramatically reduced their ability to even delay those confirmations.

So for a party looking to make comebacks in Congress in 2026 and the White House and 2028, there’s not much ground left to make a stand aside from government funding. And they sense weakness in Republicans’ long-term position on health care, even if the short-term pain is real.

“They’ll remember that we fought for health care and that we cared,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., a former governor. “No one wants [a shutdown], especially someone like me who’s used to getting stuff done. It’s my choice of last resort … this seems like the only way we can get our voice heard.”

Democrats held a long caucus meeting in the hours before the first US shutdown in six years. Unlike the circular firing squad they descended into during March’s funding deliberations, there was little dissent other than the three Democrats who supported Republicans’ stopgap spending bill on Tuesday night.

Once Democratic leaders got buy-in from the caucus’ former governors like Hickenlooper and New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen — who signed onto the fight despite some reservations — they realized the party could hold the line, for a few days at least.

Republicans are betting that position will erode. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said plenty of Democrats “want out of this rathole.”

They need five more Democrats, though, and the party’s leaders don’t see that happening anytime soon. And until they do, Republicans say Democrats won’t get the health-care deal they seek.

“We’re not going to negotiate on anything until we get past this shutdown,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who is in daily discussions with Democrats. “Somehow this works in their favor? I don’t see it that way at all. Our Democratic colleagues are going to run out of time.”