The government shutdown is hurting Massachusetts. Some 45,000 federal jobs are on the line; the state is losing $18.6 million in tourism weekly; infrastructure projects are being delayed; veterans are waiting for essential services; and families that rely on SNAP and EBT benefits are wondering where their next meal will come from.
The state’s 5th District — a hub for research, medicine and academia — is bracing for cuts to research contracts, and labs are having to scale back hiring, with ripple effects for the entire economy.
For Rep. Katherine Clark, the second-highest-ranking House Democrat, this carnage is a political pawn. “Shutdowns are terrible, and, of course, there will be families that are going to suffer,” she said on Fox News. “But it is one of the few leverage times we have.”
Her words are callous, but in a sense, we should be grateful for her honesty, because it means Democrats are saying the quiet part out loud: The party is holding the government hostage to stick it to political enemies, not caring whether the victims who get caught in the crossfire are veterans or single moms or cancer researchers or any other constituents they are charged with representing.
And what are Democrats holding the government hostage over? Obamacare subsidies from the COVID era that Democrats claimed were temporary four years ago.
The American Rescue Plan, signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, expanded the eligibility criteria for enhanced premium tax credits. These were never intended to be permanent, and if allowed to continue beyond their current duration, they would become fiscally unsustainable. The Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation found that these credits would increase federal deficits by $34.2 billion over a decade.
Worse yet, these subsidies have had a distorting effect: providers have been able to charge higher and higher rates because they know the government will pay them bigger and bigger subsidies, regardless of how much they charge. That means the overall cost increases, and tax dollars go into the pockets of health insurance executives while doctors and nurses are burdened by growing layers of bureaucracy.
While it’s near impossible to justify keeping the government shut down for this long for any reason, it is downright absurd to shut the government down over subsidies that Democrats wrote to expire for a deceptively named piece of legislation that has not given Americans more affordable health care.
Democrats have tried to convince the public that letting these subsidies expire is tantamount to “Republicans taking away your healthcare.” Still, the truth is that the so-called Affordable Care Act has precluded efficiency and transparency in the healthcare market, especially with subsidies like these.
This is what people in my Massachusetts district are being used as “leverage” for: a system that isn’t even serving them, and that has made healthcare less accessible and less affordable for them. Especially in an area with numerous doctors, medical schools, biotech and pharmaceutical firms, and research centers, Rep. Clark should be concerned about how much the ACA has hindered healthcare rather than mindlessly defending a piece of legislation that has served neither patients nor doctors.
I see Republican lawmakers going to their districts and ensuring that their constituents are heard. But where is Clark? On news channels, apparently, talking about how little regard she has for those she is supposed to serve.
It is unconscionable that a congresswoman, especially given her position as the Democratic Whip, is sitting around playing political games in Washington while throwing Massachusetts — and the country — under the bus.
Republicans have rightly held their ground — if they didn’t, the failures in American healthcare would only continue to compound. Now it’s on Democrats to keep their word that temporary subsidies will be temporary, and end this shutdown once and for all before more families needlessly suffer.
