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Tag: healthcare crisis

  • Commentary: In shutdown fight, this Nevada Democrat stands (almost) alone. And she’s fine with that

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    As the partial government shutdown grinds on, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto stands ready to end it right now.

    The lawyerly senator from Nevada is one of just two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and Maine’s independent senator, Angus King, to have the federal government up and running.

    She’s not only bucking her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but also placing herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! Now is the time! This is the fight!

    Cortez Masto evinces not a flicker of doubt.

    “I have been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and the impact to Americans and the fact that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming healthcare crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.

    “And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”

    Unlike the Democrats’ other defector, Pennsylvania’s quirky Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto hasn’t developed a reputation for partisan heresy, or antagonized party peers by playing footsie with President Trump and the MAGA movement.

    Despite her temporary alliance with the GOP, she’s unstinting in her criticism of the president and the Republican stance on healthcare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown fight.

    “Of course we need to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I’ve been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”

    Her split with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not over ends but rather means.

    It’s entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, work through the parties’ differences over healthcare, including, most imminently, the end of subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.

    It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which in Cortez Masto’s view, is still possible — even in these rabidly partisan times.

    “That’s what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get stuff done. I still believe in it.”

    Although she noted — with considerable understatement — “there are those in the administration and some of my colleagues” who disagree.

    Not to mention a great many Democratic activists who believe anything short of jailing Trump and dispatching the entire GOP-run Congress to a far-off desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.

    Nevada, where Cortez Masto was born and bred, is a state that was Republican red for a very long time before turning blue-ish for a while, starting under Barack Obama in 2008. It went back to red-ish under Trump in 2024.

    Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing the onetime Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, after the Democrat retired.

    Six years later, when she sought reelection, Cortez Masto was widely considered Democrats’ most endangered incumbent. She was not nearly as powerful or prominent as Reid had been. Inflation was raging, and Nevada was still suffering an economic hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Her opponent was a middling Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to harbor a soft spot for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

    Still, Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. In retrospect, the result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in carrying the state after twice losing Nevada.

    Cortez Masto next faces reelection in 2028, which is politically ages away. By then, the shutdown will be long forgotten. (And presumably long over.)

    Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, especially, the shutdown’s economic effect at a time Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which runs on tourism, has experienced a notable slump, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown only makes things worse.

    That, however, hasn’t deterred Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who has repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shuttered until Republicans give in.

    “Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Not to cave.”

    Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy. “She’s a good friend.… Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are doing it,” she said. “We both are doing it in different ways.”

    So, negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.

    What makes Cortez Masto think Trump, who’s run roughshod over Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats cut with Republicans to reopen the government and address the healthcare crisis she sees?

    “Well, that’s the rub, right? We know what he’s doing,” she replied. He’s “flouting the law when it comes to … taking the role of legislators and appropriating funds at his own whim…. So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.

    “But he is there. What you got to figure out is how you work together with Republican colleagues to get something done.”

    Cortez Masto noted, dryly, that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to solve problems, she said, and do more than the president’s bidding, they “need to come out and do bipartisan legislation to push back on this administration.”

    “We’ve got to govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We’ve got to work together.”

    Wouldn’t that be something.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • Republicans unveil a bill to fund the government through Nov. 21. Democrats call it partisan

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    House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.””The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.”It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”

    WASHINGTON —

    House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.

    The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

    The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.

    Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.

    The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.”

    “The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”

    Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

    This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.

    Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.

    Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.

    “It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”

    Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”

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