Including—actually, especially—the American people.
The political showdown that led to the shutdown of the U.S. government has been building for a long time. Its origins come from the same place and the same forces that account for most of our national ailments.
An unwillingness—one bordering on fanaticism—to acknowledge reality and face facts.
An entrenched retreat into the partisan, ideological and cultural silos that divide us.
And an avowed determination to dehumanize and even demonize anyone who has a point of view different than ours.
Not all that long ago in American history, our political battles were about claiming the center. At times, we were a slightly left-of-center nation. At other times, we were a slightly right-of-center country.
Most of our fights were about how we did important things, such as providing for the nation’s defense or the health of our citizens.
Not whether we should do those things.
But that has changed.
Increasingly, it has become clear that our leaders often say things they do not mean.
Consider what is at the heart of the shutdown—a battle over whether Medicare should be funded and millions of Americans should receive health care coverage.
When the fights over what became the Affordable Care Act—otherwise known as “Obamacare”—first began a little more than 15 years ago, Republicans and Democrats both said they wanted to provide health insurance to millions of old and poor Americans who lacked coverage.
The dispute—at least on the surface—was about how to pay for that coverage.
Republicans wanted a market-based solution that created incentives for containing costs. Democrats wanted a government-protected system that provided coverage for as many people as possible.
Both sides agreed—again, at least on the surface—that the existing system, which left close to 40 million Americans without health coverage, was inadequate.
“Obamacare” was the resulting compromise.
Its premise was born in a conservative think tank, but Democrats and progressives jumped on board for two reasons.
The first was that they could not gather the votes necessary to pass their preferred option, a single-payer, universal system. And the second was that this compromise offered coverage to tens of millions of Americans who hadn’t had it before.
In a sane world, both sides would have claimed responsibility for creating a program that helped more than 10% of the U.S. population.
But this is not a sane world.
Republicans and conservatives have fought to dispense with Obamacare ever since it became law. They’ve focused their fire on the parts of it—the managed-care pieces—that aimed to achieve their original stated goal of cost containment.
And Democrats have continued to hold out hopes for a more comprehensive and expensive solution.
Thus, both sides have decided to make the perfect the enemy of the good, turning a workable compromise into an excuse for continued turmoil.
Flash forward to now.
Republicans say that Medicare is on its way to insolvency.
That’s true.
Sort of.
Close analysis says the system will go belly up in 2033.
But those deficits are in part a product of a massive tax cut President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans pushed through for corporations and the wealthiest tier of Americans in 2017. That tax cut alone accounts for nearly $8 trillion of America’s slightly more than $37 trillion in debt.
Eliminate that tax cut—or just scale it back—and we can afford many things more easily.
Including health coverage for millions of needy Americans.
That tax cut was supposed to be a form of economic stimulus, a means to create jobs.
But it hasn’t worked.
Job growth slowed during Trump’s first term in office, ticked up a bit when President Joe Biden was in the White House and then slowed again.
Now, more than six months into Trump’s second administration, job growth has stalled. A country and economy of 340 million people created only 22,000 jobs in August.
A government shutdown won’t help that, particularly if Trump carries through on his threat to fire government employees and gut agencies willy-nilly.
That carnage will hurt most the Americans Democrats tend to represent.
Democrats and Republicans both are vying to determine who will win this fight that calls out for negotiation and compromise.
Who comes out on top politically should matter less than who loses.
That would be the American people.
