General Discussion

if people don't get SNAP payments or can't pay for health care. They really don't, and would have been comfortable keeping the government shut down indefinitely while people went hungry and got sick (apparently not understanding that they could get more work out of their well-fed, healthy serfs than from their hungry, sick ones). The GOP has never believed in social welfare programs, and they've fought against them since the New Deal. They opposed Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and more recently, the ACA. We got those programs only because the Democrats had enough power in Congress and the White House to get them passed. And the GOP know that once a benefit has been provided and becomes popular it's much harder to take it away than preventing it from being provided in the first place. Unfortunately, this time the Democrats don't have the leverage they need. They were faced with choosing to concede to the re-opening of the government, which means SNAP recipients and government employees will get paid, vs. keeping it shut down to force the GOP to accept the reinstatement of the ACA subsidies. The problem, I think, is that Trump and the GOP don't care if the government stays shut down; in fact, they kind of like it. The shutdown won't force them to restore the ACA subsidies because they were never going to do it. They've hated the ACA with the fire of a thousand suns since its beginning, and this is their chance to kill it - even if it means shuttering the government and starving people in the process.

Do I like the Senate's proposal? No, I do not. But I don't know what else could be done. The one thing we now know beyond all doubt is that the GOP would rather starve people in service of their master and their twisted ideology of government with no function relating to the public welfare. It all sucks.