Jeanne Shaheen and Dick Durbin are no slouches.
Yes. I believed that if we kept hammering Republicans on how unreasonable they were being -- particularly the rejection of Schumer's incredibly reasonable compromise to have a "win win" of extending the ACA subsidies for a single year to provide time to negotiate further after the government is reopened.
How reasonable that proposal was, and how unreasonable Thune's gang was being, had barely had a chance to sink in. I figured within a week the Republicans were likely to cave because they REALLY didn't like the thought of people hating on them over Thanksgiving Dinner.
But I could be wrong.
And the thing is, all along, there WERE negotiations going on -- negotiations on actual appropriations bills. Almost like a functional Congress does as a matter of course.
The thing is, the funding cuts in the MAGA Murder Budget are meaningless until they are actually implemented in an appropriation bill. I expect the negotiated bills mitigate some of those harms.
For example, the MAGA Murder Budget cut SNAP by something like 20 billion a year for the next 10 years. The Agriculture appropriations bill negotiated as part of the deal to end the shutdown fully funds SNAP at current levels through fiscal 2026.
I think we'll be hearing about a number of other "wins" for Democrats in the minibus appropriations bills
And, in addition to any concessions in those bills, we may yet get an extension of the ACA subsidies. This stand off has raised public awareness and anger about the catastrophic ACA premium increases. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that enough Republicans decide they are more afraid of their voters than trump.
Plus, the felon exposed himself as the Grinch who literally went to the Supreme Court to steal Christmas.
All in all, I don't think we are in such a bad place. Time will tell.
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