Democrats in Congress got hit with a sucker punch Monday when the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers, put out a statement calling for an end to the government shutdown.
“The path forward for Congress is clear: Reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution that allows continued debate on larger issues,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said in a statement on Monday.
The statement poses a significant issue for Democrats in their strategy for the government shutdown.
Democrats calculated that federal workers would endure the temporary pain if it meant they could force Republicans to extend the Covid-era enhanced tax credits. Even last week, a majority of Senate Democrats voted against a proposal by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) to pay some federal workers, which Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) called “Let the President Decide who he feels Like Paying Act.”
Republicans have never particularly liked federal workers, seeing the government workforce as bloated, and they aren’t too keen on labor unions. But Democrats, who have long focused on how DOGE battered the federal workforce and considered themselves the party of labor unions, seeing one call for an end to the shutdown throws a wrench in their strategy.
But Republicans are also being grossly hypocritical at the moment. Over the weekend, the Trump administration announced that families who receive federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not receive additional aid. A notice from the Department of Agriculture said that “the well has run dry” and said explicitly said “we are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”
There is some irony in Republicans threatening SNAP benefits. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that included sweeping changes to the program. In particular, it required that parents with children 14 years or older work for benefits and required states with high error rates to shoulder the cost of providing nutritional assistance.
Furthermore, while blue states such as New Mexico and Oregon have a large number of SNAP recipients, at least 16 percent of the population in states such as Oklahoma and Louisiana - the home state of House Speaker Mike Johnson - depend on the benefits, according to the Department of Agriculture.
But Johnson is not showing any sign of backing down as he continues to keep the House out of session, saying the onus is on five Democratic senators to join the GOP.
“The best way for SNAP benefits to be paid on time is for the Democrats to end their shutdown, and that can happen right now,” Johnson said on Monday during the press conference he holds almost every weekday now.
Then there’s the final pressure point that might hurt Republicans and Democrats equally: health care premiums. On November 1, open enrollment for the ‘Obamacare’ health care marketplaces begins.
That will be when many Americans on the health care exchanges will see what the new prices will be without the enhanced subsidies and feel the sticker shock.
Everyone knows what it will take to end the shutdown: the president needs to force Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries into a room and make them promise to make the same vote for health care subsidies either attached to the final continuing resolution or subject to a separate vote, kick them to the Senate and allow the House to continue its business.
“I think it's well recognized that, it's not just the House that has to figure this out,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told The Independent last week. “That the administration is going to have to sign off on it so that the House will ultimately sign off on it.”
Under normal circumstances, Murkowski, a moderate who has the respect of her Democratic colleagues, would be brokering a deal that nobody would like but would fix the problems. Her words are a tacit admission that nothing can happen without Trump’s approval.
And Trump has said he will not meet with Schumer and Jeffries until the government reopens.
But up until now, the general public has been insulated from the larger pain of a shutdown. Now, with labor feeling the pinch, poor people going hungry, and health care costs shooting up, it might be enough to force Democrats and Trump back to the table.
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