Democrats gain nothing for shutdown stunt (11-10-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive. Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Happy eleven to ten day, by the way, to all who celebrate, it's basically like us really. Also, Happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps two hundred and fifty years old to day. All right, So what did the Senate Democrats get out of the forty day Schumer shutdown? What do they get? What's the deal? Well, they didn't really get anything more than they would have gotten a couple weeks back at October had they just signed on to the clean R Continuing Resolution Chuck Schumer's caucus. According to Ed Morrissey at hotair dot com, his caucus threw in the towel last night, with at least ten Democrats pledging to vote to end the filibuster on the r The Senate will replace the cr A with new language that would extend government operations until the end of January while negotiations continue on the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget, which I'll believe that when I see it, it's going to be another one of these omnibus or minibus or whatever. Forty days ago, Schumer demanded passage of an extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies plus repeals of Medicaid changes in the One Big Beautiful bill that eliminated coverage for legal aliens. That's what Democrats were fighting for. They have stated that they denied it after they stated it, and they claimed that they are not the ones that are holding this up, but they were. The only real concession in this deal from the GOP is a pledge to rescind the layoffs that the Director of Omb Officer Management and Budget russ vote that he started riffing people, he started laying people off, but those only took place because the government shut down, right, so. You got the people. To come back to work that otherwise would have been at work had you not shut the government down. That's the biggest concession. Axios reports. The deal includes a December vote on a Democratic proposal to extend and the ACA tax credits for one year. That's the Democrats proposal. This is what they want, another one year extension of the subsidies. Well, why just one year? Democrats? Why are you making its sunset again? Why wouldn't you make the subsidies permanent? Right? I mean, if everybody is going to die without the subsidies, then it seems like you should make those permanent. But you're not wanting to make them permanent. You're only asking for one year. It's almost as if they want the issue for another election cycle. The problem they're going to have on that is that it's going to require sixty votes to pass in the Senate, and the Republicans are not going to pass an extension of the subsidies it also includes, so they didn't get anything really on that. That's why the left is so upset at these Democrats who quote caved it also. And I'll tell you who they are. I have the list, but put Catherine Cortes Mastio from Nevada. Interestingly, she is not up for reelection until twenty twenty eight. Nor is Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire, who also voted to stop the filibuster. Jane Shaheen from New Hampshire not running for reelection. Tim Kane from Virginia, he's not up for reelection until twenty thirty. Angus King, he's not up for reelection until twenty thirty. And then you had the original three that had been voting to reopen the government with the clean CR Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, and Jackie Rosen from Nevada. And that got you to your sixty votes because Ran Paul voted with the Democrats because he votes against like every government spending bill, what else do they get? It includes language aimed at providing assistance to federal employees who were laid off during the shutdown, as well as a provision to fund SNAP benefits through September thirtieth of next year. Now, the provision on SNAP is the Agriculture FDA appropriation bill. They actually did an appropriation bill for that, so that's not even a concession that they got because it was already there. It's one of the dozen bills that form the discretionary part of the federal budget. That bill and two others are ready for passage. When you hear people like me talking about regular order. This is what we're talking about. You're supposed to be running your budgets through these committees, developing the budgets, bringing them through the House, then going to the Senate. That's the regular order. And we haven't been following that for gosh, I don't even know, twenty years. That's why we end up in this constant fiscal cliff, omnibus, Cromnibus, clean CRS, supplemental funding requests, minibuses, whatever. It's like, all of these gimmicks are done because we're not following or Congress is not following regular order. So they were actually trying to now return to regular order. And the Agriculture Budget or Appropriation Bill has been done and it includes the snap money, so that's not a concession. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had already put them into a so called minibus. As for the concession on the Affordable Care Act, it's not really a concession either. Donald Trump has expressed concern about the impact of the expiration of the subsidies, which will hit Obamacare customers like attack hike, five years after the pandemic for which the subsidies were implemented. Trump and the GOP want to restrict and reduce them, and the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill planned to work on this regardless of what happened with the CR. So that really wasn't even a big win for the Democrats either, not really a concession when they were already planning to do it, which I guess they're going to have to come out against the ACA subsidies if Trump proposes it. Right, if Trump comes along and it's like, you know what we need to do these subsidies. Yes, we're gonna We're gonna these are the biggest and best subsidies. People are hurting. I'm looking out for them. And so he's going to propose the subsidies. And then what a Democrat's going to do, They're going to agree to that. Ed Morrissey at hot Air says it may infuriate conservatives who warned about the political trap that these temporary emergency subsidies created, because we were right. We were. This is precisely why Democrats do it. The issue of healthcare is like the fatted cath for Democrats. For elections, they love to run on healthcare. That's why everything kind of gets shoehorned into healthcare like abortions, you know, women's health care. They label everything healthcare because healthcare polls well for them. He goes on to say, Unfortunately, retiring Senator Tom Tillis is correct about the political reality for Republicans as the midterms approach. Tillis said, quote, if we don't work on a smart glide path for the Obamacare subsidies, that too, will be something that will produce headwinds for Republicans in the midterms. Right, Democrats put the subsidies in and they sunseted them for now in order to maximize the damage to Republicans. That's the game they're playing. That's why I call it the Hamas strategy. It's a PR leverage move that puts your own people in pain in order to extract the PR win. But just like Hamas's strategy, at some point the PR doesn't win you the war, and you then have to cave. You have to eventually agree to give back the hostages. And that's what Democrats did yesterday. The point remains, a promise for a vote at some point on the ACA subsidies is really not a concession at all. That vote would have happened with or without the shutdown, rescinding the layoffs, maybe a concession of some sort, but the riffs would not have happened in the first place had Schumer not shut down. The government agreement includes back pay for furloughed workers, but that's standard operating procedure and shutdown deals too. The fact that Democrats couldn't even get an agreement to bypass the filibuster on the vote for the ACA subsidies means Schumer came away with literally nothing at all, and that's why people are calling for his head. Blue Sky is lit today. Oh my goodness, the radical lefties over on Blue Sky. They're having a moment. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. 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All righty from Ed Morrissey's piece at hotier dot com. He points out that Schumer came away with literally nothing at all after these eight Democrats voted with the fifty two Republicans to unlock the filibuster. To break the filibuster, now a vote can occur and then it'll go back over to the House where the Republicans have the majority, and a simple majority in the House will be enough to pass it. Democrat Representative Brendan Boyle was on MSNBC and he was asked, can you explain how you interpret why this deal came together now? And Boyle said, quote, I. Can't explain it because to be frank. To me, it makes absolutely no sense. I am completely perplexed by today's developments. No, it's pretty clear to me what happened. It's not perplexing at all. Schumer insisted on playing a losing hand, and he lost. Because it was a losing hand. They couldn't even they couldn't even articulate who was shutting the government down. They kept trying to blame the Republicans, but they were the ones that were making extra demands. It was a bipartisan vote from the jump in the in the Senate to pass the clean Continuing Resolution. Republicans had already offered weeks ago, hey, if you want to do an Obamacare subsidy thing, then yeah, well we can bring that up for you. But that's not going to be part of this. And they're like, no, it has to be part of this, and they used it for the run up to the No King's rally because the leadership, specifically Chuck Schumer, is worried about a challenge in his Senate race from his left, namely AOC Alexandria. Cause this right, he's worried that the radical leftists have so taken over the party that in a Democrat primary. He's going to lose, so he has to show that he can fight the Republicans. And when they did the Continuing Resolution a couple months back, he did not block that with a filibuster, and he was pilloried for it by his own voters, and so he did not want a replay of that, so he chose this other course. And the problem was there's no off ramp for him. So then it became, well, we were going to show that we're fighting, and then the No Kings people show up and they're kind of crazy, and so we don't want to get any of their fire. Just let them hammer Trump, you know, and then like keep everybody agitated through the election and the weekend after the election. Then he allows five more members of the Democrat Party in the Senate to vote with the Republicans. It's all very clear. I don't know why this Congressman Boyle seems perplexed. But then again, so many are arguments are tedious like this, and that it seems like, I don't know, eighty percent of arguments usually include people on the left pretending not to understand something, so you can start to have the actual argument. Simone Sanders Townsend co host at MSNBC. She tweeted out, if they don't get anything except a promise to vote later, then how do Senate Democrats explain the last forty days to the people who have suffered? The people were supportive of Democrat efforts to fight for something, But what happens if the fight ends with nothing for the people? Oh, she's so close, she's so close to understanding it. Warmer, warmer, hot, you're hot. Oh my gosh. Yeah, It's almost as if they weren't really fighting. It's almost as if they were just telling you that they think you're stupid. That's what that tells you. They think you're dumb. Oh and, by the way, none of this works, Just like the Hamas strategy, none of this works without a complicit media. 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Stephen Miller, a writer at The Spectator, says Democrats went on for three weeks about unaffordable healthcare and starving families, and then last night they're all upset that people are going to get healthcare and their Snap benefits back. Also, Blue Sky, the lefty Twitter competitor which is like circling the drain, is currently posting guillotine memes about Chuck Schumer. Guys, if this is really about Snap benefits and starving families, he says, the Democratic Party and their Blue Sky influencers would not be throwing a hissy fit right now if it really was about those things, they would not be outraged. Everyone knows this, and the only reason this is dragged out this way is because the media carried that. Message for them. That is exactly right on the text line. Oscar says, with the success of the last election, the Democrats may do this before future elections. Indeed, sir, correct, they stage this stuff so they have the healthcare issue and they can catastrophize, scare their constituents, and animate them and motivate them to go vote. It's supremely cynical. Steven, Welcome to the program. Hello, Stephen, Oh. Hey, pet Hey, So you were talking about how Schumer was doing this to fight off an attack from the left, primary from the left about a Cossio Cortes. Yeah, anyway, she h. This isn't going to help him because all this interest in lefty Democrats on Reddit are blaming him one hundred percent for this, even though he voted no on it. Right. See, they think he either engineered it or they think that his ineffective leadership led to it falling apart. Right. No, you're exactly right that there are only two options. He either, as you say, engineered it so he would have cover, or he could not keep his own members in line. Either way, they don't care, it's the same outcome, and they're they're there. They're they're they're calling for his head on reddit Land too. So I don't see how this ends well for Schumer either way. Not that this was, like you said, this was a losing hand from the beginning. Right, And he had, I mean, his polling the last the last polling I saw from him, and I want to say it was probably about three weeks ago, and he was somewhere among Democrats. He was somewhere around seventeen percent among Democrats. That and that's that's the same state that just elected Mundami. So yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah, he may very well just announce his retirement rather than lose to Aksuo Cortes in a Democratic primary. That would definitely be the face saver for him. But yeah, I appreciate your time. So yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for thanks for trawling over reddit. Because I don't want to do it. It's assessful. There. Oh, then there was this from Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George W. Bush. He says the debate over Obamacare's temporary subsidy on top of a subsidy is a good example of where our country is today, right, because remember the subsidy that they're talking about is just the COVID subsidy. There was another subsidy prior to that. Okay, some want free healthcare and know if they subsidize enough middle and upper middle income people to get them onto Obamacare, then private insurance will become so expensive it withers on the vine. This has been my belief from the outset. Obamacare is designed to destroy the current healthcare system and turn it all into a government run system. That's the end goal. All you gotta do is inject the statist poison into the system and just keep ratcheting it up, ratcheting it up. Others believe that after you help those in poverty, that nothing in life is free, including healthcare, and they think it's reasonable for those not in poverty to pay health insurance premiums. Right, These are like the basic outlines of the argument, and they have been from the very beginning. Free healthcare is not free. Also, healthcare is not insurance. They are different things. Free stuff for almost everyone versus everyone has to pay something. That's what the fight is about. That's aorr Fleischer. And then there was Tim Kaine, one of the senators, one of the Democrats, who voted for Kloture, who voted to end the filibustering. And he makes quite the admission that he's been voting no this whole time without really understanding the full dynamics of the issue. This is what he said. Do you wish that you would have started looking for this off fra him soon said that Republicans were never going to change in their position. I didn't fully understand how dug in they were. Again because I was so focused on the Virginia elections. I wasn't in this discussion on the healthcare to see how dug in they were. But even as I was not part of these discussions, I was saying to Thune and others on the floor, going back, listen, I need you some of you heard me say this in the all. I need a more attireum on mischief. Others are working on the healthcare thing, I trust them. Others are working on the approached thing. I trust them. I need a moretirem on mischief because if we vote to open and then the immediate step next week is Donald Trump fires a lot more people. It's going to blow up trust to get the full year deal. See. But the problem there is that again, the layoffs were only done because of the shutdown, So you guys induced that, and you were warned russ vote at Omb warned you, like, if you guys shut down the guver, I'm gonna I'm gonna use that as an opportunity to start doing headcount cuts. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription. Then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let me jump over to the phone lines and chat with Jimmy. Hello, Jimmy, Hey, it's Jack. Actually, oh, Jack, just. Wanted to point out to you, by the way, Pete, you're doing a great job. Thanks our compliments as always. But there's another aspect of this humor issue too, and that is and that is the fact that he's Jewish. No, Lieberman left the Democrat Party because of increasing anti Israel policies and anti semitism. Now they're in full blown anti semitism with ma'm Donnie and the rest of his bunch. So you know, yeah, Chuck time is Chuck. Time is not right. They welcomed, yeah, they welcomed h They welcomed these radicals into the party, and now they have taked. The radicals have taken over the party and the yeah, the corporate donors and stuff, and they they're all that remains and they're not enough to keep the establishment candidates around. Well as the as the old saying goes, you, you know, show the wins the whirlwind. Yes, sir, Yeah, Jack, appreciate the call. Yeah, appreciate the call. H it's the it's the old you know, feeding the alligator in the hope that it eats you last. It eventually does eat you, though it's always the problem with that it does eat you. So people on the Democrat side and the radical side, they are they're they're not happy today because the government is reopening and people now are not going to starve to death. Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker. She writes to sum up, Democrats had a strong week at the polls, the election, and are ending it by agreeing to a deal that was in that was on offer weeks ago without anything that they were demanding. Que the Democrat civil war. Yeah, but you can't call it a civil war that only happens inside the Republican party. Okay, Democrats are in disarray, and they're very sensitive about that branding. But that's how it's always been cast. Democrats are in disarray. Republicans they're always in civil war. But yeah, this is this is the problem. In fact, the Lincoln Project. These are the former Republican establishment types that broke away because they hate Orange Hitler so much that they went off and started their own Lincoln Project. And like, I still don't know if this is all just a grift, because it's a brilliant grift if that's what it is. It's brilliant because they siphon up millions and millions of Democrat donor money and then they produce ads and put out you know, memes and such that don't actually influence any elections, but the left loves them. The left loves them some Lincoln Project stuff. And Rick Wilson is over there among others, and he's just nasty, a nasty, nasty campaign consultant guy, formerly a Republican, now he does all this stuff anti Trump. And he said, the Republicans cannot believe their luck. They get to end the shutdown, blame it on Democrats and go back to the magabase and say we killed Obama Care at last. Yeah, they didn't kill it. It's not dead yet. It's not dead yet. We had a chance, we had a chance. But another never Trumper, John McCain, he blocked that he was the one that had the chance to dismantle Obamacare, but he hated Trump so much that he had to subject Americans to further pain, and so he did not vote with all the other Republicans to kill Obamacare. Carl Paulus, historian and author, says, if you notice they aren't offering any ideas on how to actually fix Obamacare. You notice this, It's just that we have to pay the subsidies otherwise people will be mad at their signature policy of the twenty tens. This is a great point, like why are you not offering fixes for Obamacare? All you're demanding is that we just throw more, more and more money at it, hundreds of billions of dollars. You have to understand a huge driver of Democrat politics today is just trying to avoid feeling dumb about everything they said and did during the Obama terms. They literally think we need more money for Obamacare, otherwise the GOP will be proven right about it. They think that's a policy. He's exactly right. There's a fellow named Gnoam Bloom or Blum, co host of a podcast called The Ambitious Crossover Attempt. He goes by a Twitter name of Neon Taster. I don't know why but he's a pundit, and he said the blue Sky crowd on the left over at blue Sky, the social media app, they're like all fight fight, but they're literally Their only lever was keeping the government shut down, and that did not work. He says, again, I'm trying to understand what they wanted Democrats to actually do here. What could you actually do? The only. Lever you could pull was the shutdown, and that's not going to get you what you want. Let me go to the. Text line here, driven by liberty buick GMC. This is from I don't know make This is from a seven oh four number. Make the ingredients sugar and artificial sweeteners illegal to use, and eighty five percent of people won't need to worry about healthcare expenses. Well, that is one of the things, Like our healthcare costs are so high in part because we make really really bad decisions about a lot of things that we put in our pile. This is from I don't know, another seven oh four number. I think the Democrats won't make permanent subsidies for Obamacare is because they need a fight in the future. If there's no them, then there's no reason to vote for us. Yeah, that's it's the same dynamic at play with the budget fights, with the fiscal cliff, the continuing resolutions, the Omnibus bills. Right, these random deadlines and everything is. Like, oh my gosh, we're going to shut down. We're not going to be able to pay everybody. Like all of these panics are all because they have designed the system to run the way it's running for these budget funding cycles to end as they do, and then it's about scheduling them to land right before an election, and the deadline applies pressure that now. You just have to vote along with them. You've got to go along with it unless you want people to starve to death, and you don't want that, right, This is from Daryl. A lot of people think Medicare is free to us over sixty five, but it's not. Between what is deducted from our Social Security checks and what we pay for an additional advantage plan. My wife and I pay about five hundred dollars per month. Well, here's another thing. The average was that on average, people will draw down more out of from Medicare than they ever contributed. Like that's the data. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much. For listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.