WASHINGTON – The White House on Wednesday accused Democrats of forcing a government shutdown over “free health care for illegal aliens,” echoing Republican lawmakers. But the Affordable Care Act subsidies at issue have never been available to undocumented immigrants, and Democrats rejected the claim that immigration is driving the standoff.
The shutdown began Tuesday night after the Senate failed to pass either party’s budget proposal. Democrats sought to restore Medicaid funding and extend ACA subsidies, set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans argue those subsidies benefit undocumented immigrants — a charge Democratic lawmakers and policy experts say is false.
“This entire shutdown is based on a ridiculous Republican lie,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “Speaker Johnson and Vice President Vance have pulled this out of their hats. They’re saying that the undocumented will be eligible for this, a flat out lie to weaponize the immigration issue in this critical crossroad and debate.”
Vice President JD Vance countered that the text in the Democrats’ funding proposal included such provisions. But Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who introduced the bill, said in a statement that undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in federally-funded health coverage under existing law or Democrats’ funding proposal.
Georgetown Law Professor M. Gregg Bloche, who served as a health care advisor on former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, said that complex legislation can lead people to mistaken conclusions. But in this case, he said, there is simply no ambiguity.
“We seem to have entered an era in which it has become acceptable, in the eyes of many, to make stuff up that’s flagrantly false, and to purvey it in the hope that — to borrow the cliché — lie spreads around the world before truth has a chance to get going,” Bloche said.
There has been a Republican effort to portray the country as facing a crisis analogous to a military invasion, Bloche said, due to the presence of undocumented immigrants. Finding success in persuading the public, the next step would be to sell the follow-up that Democrats want to aid those invaders to paint them in a bad light, he said.
Valerie Lacarte, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute, noted that restrictions on immigrant eligibility have only grown stricter. Some immigrants with a form of legal status — such as asylum applicants — could once buy subsidized health insurance, until Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passed.
However, those cuts didn’t just affect a narrow group of immigrants, Lacarte said. They also stripped subsidies from millions of low- and middle-income Americans. Democrats now want to restore those subsidies, Lacarte said, but Republicans have focused on the small number of immigrants — who have some form of legal status, despite Republican claims they don’t — who would also regain access.
“The Republicans, I think for political purposes or for the media and confusion, they’re picking at that, but the ACA cuts are a lot broader than the immigrant piece,” Lacarte said. “And in fact, even in terms of the budget, if this was only focused on the immigrants, the small groups that were purchasing health insurance wouldn’t really be significant.”
Murray said that Republicans are outright lying because their attacks on health care are massively unpopular.
According to Rafael Bernal, a spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democrats have been clear from day one that the “red line” has always been protecting those ACA subsidies, which undocumented immigrants are not now, nor have ever been, nor will likely ever be, eligible for benefits from.
“If Republicans aren’t here to negotiate, to address their concerns line by line, then there’s not much more that Democrats can do except shout from the rooftops that we will safeguard these subsidies that are essential for the American health care system,” Bernal said.
Bernal said there are only two logical conclusions as to why Republicans have used this strategy. They either wanted to shut the government down, he said, and therefore it wouldn’t matter what Democrats asked for, or they don’t understand the fundamentals of political negotiation.
“It is incumbent on the majority party to get the votes it needs to keep the government open. In order to do that in a very tight majority, they need to find the different factions of the legislative body and make sure they don’t cross red lines with them,” Bernal said. “That’s basic politics. And my fear is it’s pretty obvious that there are many able politicians of the Republican Party who know that. So my fear is, under that logic, they were looking for a shutdown.”
