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Dems Shutting Down Govt. To Save Obamacare Subsidies 'For Wealthy': Expert

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, said Democrats' position in the standoff amounts to 
shutting down the government over "Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy."

The subsidies were first expanded under President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan, and 
later extended through the Inflation Reduction Act. They are set to expire on December 31,2025.

Democrats argue that allowing the subsidies to lapse would cause many Americans to lose health coverage. Critics, however, contend 
the enhanced assistance primarily benefits higher-income households rather than those most in need.

"What the enhanced subsidies do is they subsidize people making from $129,000 all the way up to $600,000 per year. And so these are 
really the Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy," Cannon told Breitbart News.

"The part that offends people is that Obamacare is still so unaffordable that people earning $129,000, $200,000, $300,000, 
$400,000, $500,000 a year still can't afford it - and that's why the government is subsidizing them," he added.

"The most important kind of assistance we can provide to people who are having a hard time affording health insurance is to get all 
the Obamacare regulations out of the way. Because if you do that, then premiums will plummet by 50 to 60 percent for most people in 
the Exchanges," he continued.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimated that the Democratic counterproposal to the Republican stopgap 
spending bill - which calls for permanently extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies - would increase the national debt 
by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

"If lawmakers want to extend any of the ACA subsidies, they should do so responsibly by targeting the extension and at least 
offsetting the costs. Ideally we should be offsetting new borrowing twice over," Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a 
Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement.

"Plenty of options are available, from adopting site-neutral payments to reducing Medicare Advantage upcoding to funding Cost 
Sharing Reduction payments," MacGuineas noted further.

"Meanwhile, if lawmakers want to pare back parts of the reconciliation law, they should focus on the $6 trillion in tax cuts and 
spending increases, not the payfors," she said. "We should be able to keep the government's lights on without making our 
devastating fiscal situation even worse."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, was laughed off the podium this week after dismissing a New York Times 
poll showing that Americans blame Democrats for the government shutdown.

The unusual scene unfolded just before the shutdown officially began, when Senate Democrats rejected a continuing resolution passed 
by the House.

"Now I know the leader is going to show a poll that says that Democrats will be blamed for the shutdown," Schumer said, referring 
to the New York Times/Siena College survey. "There are many more polls that show Republicans are blamed. The question in that poll 
is biased."

"In the New York Times, but it's biased," he continued, prompting Republicans across the chamber to erupt into laughter. "I don't 
always believe the New York Times ... You can be sure of that. Neither do you."

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have pushed the Trump administration to extend Affordable Care Act tax 
credits and guarantee taxpayer-funded health care "for all." Republicans and the White House rejected the proposals, saying 
Democrats were demanding taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants.

"If you look at the original they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying the American 
people want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while 
Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills," Vice President JD Vance said following a White House meeting with 
congressional leaders.

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"Trump Derangement Syndrome" Is a Real Mental Condition

All you need to know about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or TDS.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike 
of Donald Trump, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."

Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that broke TDS down into 
three distinct phases or stages:

"In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect's every tweet provokes a firestorm, 
as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world."

"The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting 
solely of hyperbole."

"As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality."

The Point here is simple: TDS is, in the eyes of its adherents, the knee-jerk opposition from liberals to anything and everything 
Trump does. If Trump announced he was donating every dollar he's ever made, TDS sufferers would suggest he was up to something 
nefarious, according to the logic of TDS. There's nothing - not. one. thing. - that Trump could do or say that would be received 
positively by TDSers.

The history of Trump Derangement Syndrome actually goes back to the early 2000s - a time when the idea of Trump as president was a 
punch line for late-night comics and nothing more.

Wikipedia traces its roots to "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - a term first coined by the late conservative columnist Charles 
Krauthammer back in 2003. The condition, as Krauthammer defined it, was "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in 
reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence of George W. Bush."