WASHINGTON – House Democrats gathered in Washington this week to present a united front amid the shutdown and continue to put pressure on their Republican colleagues to address cuts to health care and nutritional assistance programs. Meanwhile, Republicans blame Democrats for the shutdown continuing because they refuse to back down on their demand, leaving Congress at an impasse.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called his caucus back to the Capitol to host a series of events to bring attention to rising health care premiums and disappearing funding for nutritional assistance programs.
This summer, Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which eliminated federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plan premiums. KFF approximates that people who receive subsidized premiums will see their costs more than double.
“Instead of working with Democrats to fix the crisis they’ve created and reopen the government, Republicans are instead trying to ratchet up the pain that Americans will feel,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) at a hearing hosted by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and the House Democratic Women’s Caucus Tuesday morning.
Witness Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, CEO and Executive Director of MomsRising.org, an organization that advocates for issues impacting women, said the rising cost of her health care premiums would be unaffordable for her and her husband.
“I’m scared. My husband and I both don’t get insurance through our jobs, so if ACA premiums go up, we simply won’t be able to pay them,” she said.
While House Democrats are in Washington, the overall body is still in recess. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) designated the week of Oct. 27 as a district work period last Friday, extending the recess into a fifth week and reigniting frustration among Democrats who seek to resume business-as-usual.
The House has been in session for just 21 days since July 3.
Johnson claims that Democrats are inflicting pain on Americans in a press conference on Tuesday.
“Republicans are here in Washington, and we’re out in our district and across the country, doing good work on behalf of the people we serve and represent. And what are the Democrats doing? You’ve seen them posting TikTok videos. They’re bragging about using the American people’s pain as their political leverage,” he said.
Johnson’s statement was in reference to comments made by House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) on Democrats’ voting to keep the government closed.
In a televised interview with Fox News, Clark said that missed paychecks for federal workers and the “suffering” of American families is “one of the few leverage times we have.”
In daily press conferences, Rep. Jeffries often says that the House GOP is on vacation. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) disagrees.
“[Republicans] have been in their districts, working for the American people who are suffering from this Democratic, [Sen. Chuck] Schumer-led shutdown. You will see Republicans volunteering at food banks, Republicans supporting rural hospitals, Republicans cleaning up national parks and Republicans helping people in real ways,” she said.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon on nutritional assistance programs, Jeffries and colleagues Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) argued that President Donald Trump and Republicans are driving the shutdown and harming American families.
DeLauro called out Trump for refusing to step in and address cuts to SNAP benefits and other nutritional assistance programs during the shutdown.
“Every state in the nation has people who are going to be hurt by what they’re doing and withholding this money. So why doesn’t Mike Johnson get his members of his conference, bring them back, be in touch with the President and say, ‘Excuse me, let the funds roll?’” DeLauro told Medill News Service.
The Department of Agriculture has said that it does not have the funds to pay for food stamp benefits and that it cannot tap into its roughly $6 billion worth of contingency funds to secure benefits for next months. That decision has prompted over two dozen Democratic state leaders to file a lawsuit against the Trump Administration.
“When it comes to making sure hungry families can put food on the table, all of the sudden they can’t find the money,” DeLauro said.
Jeffries said his Republican colleagues have little credibility when they condemn the suffering of Americans losing access to nutrition programs and health care.
“The American people have already seen what Republican policies look like, and that’s ripping health care away from millions of Americans and doing the same thing as it relates to nutritional assistance,” he said.
As the shutdown barrels on, little progress has been made to move the needle on health care costs. Today the shutdown hit the 30-day mark, which is only five days short of the longest in history, a government stoppage that began in December 2018.
