Headline we thought we'd never see
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Washington Post Editorial Board: Democrats' Shutdown Demands Are Irresponsible
The U.S. national debt stands at $37.9 trillion, a figure that dwarfs the annual gross domestic product of every other country. It has grown dramatically since the pandemic. In the 2019 fiscal year, the federal government spent $5.47 trillion but took in only $4.26 trillion. Five years later, spending clocked in at $6.75 trillion as revenue failed to keep up with this dramatic expansion of government...Yet Democrats have demanded that Republicans agree to extend the covid-era insurance subsidies without proposing any way to pay for it. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will cost $350 billion over the next decade. These temporary benefits were included in the American Rescue Plan of March 2021 and extended the next year in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act until the end of 2025.
John sexton: “But this may be my favorite part of all, in which the Post recounts the failure of the Affordable Care Act to be affordable.:
The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable. President Barack Obama’s signature achievement allowed people to buy insurance on marketplaces with subsidies based on their income. The architects of the program assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.
To salvage the program, Democrats expanded subsidies to entice more people to buy plans. Many poor families wound up getting insurance for free, and the rolls grew: 24 million people now have coverage through the ACA exchanges.
Sexton: “As I pointed out here last week, Dems' emergency spending on Obamacare succeeded in roughly doubling the number of people enrolled in the program. And that was largely thanks to a jump in the number of people eligible for free insurance. After fifteen years, Obamacare has barely worked as a marketplace but it has always worked as a giveaway. That was always part of the design. It was a single payer starter project which could be expanded by simply shoveling more government money into it over time. That's what Democrats are trying to do now with this shutdown.
“Again, I can't believe this is the Washington Post, but this next paragraph ought to be plated in bronze and set in stone outside the building so Post staffers see it on the way in to the office every day.”
This is how entitlement programs work. Once you habituate people to some generous government handout, they grow dependent on it. And it becomes politically perilous, if not impossible, to fully claw it back. Conservatives fought so hard to stop Obamacare 15 years ago because they anticipated fights like this one.
The editorial ends in the somewhat dejected conclusion that Republicans might eventually give in to Democrats' demands.
The likeliest outcome of the shutdown is that both sides agree to spend more money without paying for it, let alone being honest with voters about the tradeoffs too many have ignored for too long.
And then there’s this: