President Donald Trump is not worried about voters blaming him for a potential government shutdown even though his party controls not just the White House but also both chambers of Congress.
Trump met Monday with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, who are pushing to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies and roll back Republican cuts to Medicaid in exchange for their party’s support on a short-term funding bill to keep the government open past Tuesday.
After the two sides failed to reach an agreement, the president told Politico that he didn’t think voters would hold it against him if the government shuts down.
“I don’t worry about that, because people that are smart see what’s happening,” he said. “The Democrats are deranged.”
He also repeated the Republican talking point that rather than keeping healthcare costs down, Democrats “want to destroy health care in America by giving it to millions and millions of illegal aliens”—a claim that he also illustrated on social media with a shocking deepfake video of Jeffries and Schumer.
In fact, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the Affordable Health Care Act plans or for Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program that Democrats are seeking to bolster, The New York Times reported.
Non-partisan polling has also found that 45 percent of respondents said they would blame Republicans for a shutdown compared to 32 percent who would blame Democrats, while a GOP firm found that 35 percent of voters would blame the White House or Republican leadership versus 34 percent who would blame Democratic leadership, according to Politico.
In response to a request for comment about why Trump is so confident voters will agree with him on the issue, a White House spokesperson said Democrats were threatening to shut down the government over a “$1.5 trillion wish list of demands, including free health care for illegal aliens.”
“The Democrats’ radical agenda was rejected by the American people less than a year ago at the ballot box, now they’re trying to shut down the government and hold the American people hostage over it,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
Regardless of who voters blame, they’ll be sure to notice if a government shutdown pushes the economy toward a dreaded state of stagnation—a perfect storm of poor growth, high unemployment and high inflation—or if their health insurance premiums skyrocket next year as the result of a Republican budget bill.
Premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees are expected to shoot up by 75 percent on average when former President Joe Biden’s advance premium tax credit expires at the end of the year, Newsweek reported.
More than 10 percent of the 24 million Americans enrolled in ACA marketplaces could be forced off their health insurance plans by the rising premiums, according to a March study from Harvard University.
Out-of-pocket expenses for employer-provided health care plans are also expected to spike by double digits next year because of rising costs, The New York Times reported.
All of this could seriously jeopardize Republicans’ chances of keeping control of Congress during next year’s midterm elections, according to Trump’s own pollsters.
If GOP candidates in competitive districts let the ACA tax credits expire, they will trail Democratic rivals in a generic ballot by a devastating 15 points, Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward reported in July.
“Unlike recent changes to Medicaid, which don’t kick in until after the midterms, voters on the individual insurance marketplace—who backed Trump by 4 points—will start getting notices of significant premium hikes this fall,” they wrote.
