11/13/25

11/13/2025

By the time you read this column, it may be irrelevant. I hope so. But I doubt it.

Assuming the federal government is still partially shut down by the column’s publication on Thursday, November 13, we will have endured it for 44 days, a month and a half since it began October 1. That’s a record. The longest previous shutdown—35 days—took place in late 2018 and early 2019. The issue at that time was then-President Donald Trump’s demand that Congress appropriate $5.7 billion for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. That proposal was unacceptable to Congressional Democrats, whose Senate filibuster prevented its approval.

In that episode Trump insisted he would not reopen the government without the wall appropriation. But increasing pressure from the public, and from Republicans who held the congressional majorities, finally convinced him to agree to a three-week government extension while Congress negotiated on border security. The government reopened, but the resulting border appropriation was only about 25 percent of what Trump demanded. So the following month he declared a national emergency, thereby bypassing Congress and initiating construction of his wall.

The 2018-19 shutdown caused pain similar to what’s happening today: federal workers furloughed without pay with some of them visiting food banks, government services curtailed across several agencies, airport slowdowns and cancellations, national economic losses that couldn’t be recovered. And a fed-up public blamed elected leaders, also like the reaction to the current shutdown.

This fall’s shutdown creates even more concern because SNAP (food stamp) benefits are in great jeopardy for millions of people who rely on them. Those benefits officially expired with the end of the 2024-25 federal fiscal year on September 30. They were kept going for a few weeks by shifting funds from other sources.

The causes of today’s shutdown are entirely different from those of seven years ago, and they’re proving more intractable. This time health care is the nub of the dispute, something more immediate and personal to a much larger group of Americans than illegal border crossings were in 2018.

Republicans traditionally have been uncomfortable with government regulation in health care. When President Harry Truman tried to enact national health insurance 75 years ago, Republicans and conservative southern Democrats defeated the effort.

When President Lyndon Johnson succeeded in pushing Medicare and Medicaid through Congress in 1965, a majority of Republicans in both houses opposed it. Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the 1964 Republican platform all strongly spoke out against the concept.

When President Bill Clinton in the 1990s assigned his wife Hillary Clinton the task of creating a federal role for health care, Congressional Republicans overwhelmingly opposed her efforts and successfully prevented their enactment.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act—the ACA, or Obamacare—in 2010, House Republicans have tried to repeal or modify it 70 times.

And with the expanded tax credits on health care premiums originally adopted under President Joe Biden in 2021 due to expire at the end of this calendar year, President Trump and congressional Republicans are determined to defeat their extension, or at least to reduce their generosity.

The debate over what to do about the health care premium tax credit extension generated the current government shutdown, and it’s what has led to the shutdown’s record length. Estimates vary, but all of them agree that several million Americans would lose their health care coverage if Congress does not renew the credits, or if President Trump vetoes such a bill.

Democrats in Congress, because of the way the situation has evolved, are having to choose between conceding a reduction of health care benefits to millions of Americans or denying SNAP food assistance to 42 million people of modest incomes.

Republican and Democratic congressional leaders have suggested several compromises to the impasse, but as of this writing (Sunday, November 9) no one has yet found the magic solution. 

Democrats say they won’t vote to temporarily continue government spending at its current level unless Congress and the President also extend the health care premium tax credits past December 31. Because the 100-member Senate’s filibuster rule generally requires at least 60 votes to shut off debate and adopt a bill, the Republican proposal is stalled in that body, which is divided closely between the parties. 

Republicans say they’re very willing to negotiate on tax credit extension, but not until after Democrats reopen the government by at least agreeing to a temporary continuation of current federal departmental spending levels. The Senate GOP had voted unsuccessfully to reopen the government 14 times as of last Sunday.

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last Friday offered that Senate Democrats would vote to reopen the government in return for a one-year extension of the health care tax credits. Schumer said that would provide enough time for a bipartisan committee to negotiate a long-lasting compromise on health care funding.

Republican leaders quickly said that idea is a non-starter. They are sticking to their position that the government has to reopen first before the health care credits can be extended. But they so far haven’t said why.

The likely reason, I expect, is “reconciliation.”

For the last 50 years, Congress has allowed budget legislation, under certain restrictive conditions, to avoid the filibuster rule. It would appear that under that procedure, changes to health care premium tax credits could be adopted in the Senate by a simple 51-vote majority rather than the filibustered 60-vote requirement.

Both parties know this. They haven’t said much, if at all, about it. But Democrats can use the filibuster to continue the shutdown in order to protect the tax credits. Republicans, on the other hand, could reduce or even eliminate the tax credits by a simple majority once the government reopens.

The “clean” reopen that Republicans want is a way to let them alter the health care tax credits however they wish. Democrats need to tie the reopening and the tax credits together in order to protect current tax credit levels. 

That’s what keeping the government closed. Republicans aren’t likely to do anything without Trump’s approval, and he shows no sign of being willing to compromise with Democrats on the issue. The government will reopen eventually—but not until one side or the other feels increased public pressure that becomes intolerable. 

When that happens is anyone’s guess.