Today marks nearly three weeks since the start of Democrats’ government shutdown, which has forced federal law enforcement to work without pay, left air traffic control towers understaffed, and jeopardized nutritional programs for millions of low-income families.

This crisis was entirely avoidable. Yet Democrats have voted 10 times to keep the government closed as part of a reckless effort to hold Washington hostage and ram through $1.5 trillion in new spending.

Senate Democrat Leader Schumer claims this inflationary spending is necessary, in part, to prevent Republicans from “taking health care away” from Americans by allowing Obamacare subsidies to expire. This claim is completely false and reveals how Democrats are continuing to put politics over the American people.

In fact, the Obamacare subsidies, which are meant to help those enrolled in the program pay their health care premiums, are permanent and cannot expire. Households with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $128,600 for a family of four, will continue to receive the credits with no interruption. For the lowest income individuals, insurance premiums can never exceed two percent of the total household income.

What is set to expire at the end of the year, however, are President Biden’s COVID-era enhanced credits, which he signed into law in 2021, that eliminated the 400-percent income cap for the taxpayer-funded subsidies, allowing unlimited eligibility regardless of income.

At the time, Democrats claimed this expansion was necessary to help Americans struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that these emergency subsidies are set to expire more than five years after the start of the pandemic, Democrats are fighting to make them permanent—at a cost of $450 billion to the taxpayers.

With our national debt at nearly $38 trillion, this effort is grossly irresponsible, especially to fund a program that is rife with waste and fraud. According to one estimate, there were 6.4 million people improperly reporting their income to benefit from fully funded Obamacare plans thanks to Biden’s COVID credits, wasting $27 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2025 alone.

In another peculiar example of wasteful enrollment, last year close to 12 million Obamacare enrollees filed no claims, a number that more than tripled from 2021 as the result of Democrats expanding the option for zero-dollar premium plans. Many of these are considered “phantom enrollees”—individuals who do not know that they are enrolled in Obamacare or who have separate health care coverage they elect to use. Yet taxpayers sent money directly to insurers on their behalf.

Extending Biden’s enhanced credits like Democrats are demanding would do nothing to address this rampant fraud and wasteful spending on unused plans. Republicans have already started to address the root of the issue, securing measures in the One Big Beautiful Bill that prevent illegal aliens from receiving Obamacare subsidies and requiring individuals who misstate their income to repay the excess subsidy amount in full. We stand ready to work with 

our Democrat colleagues to implement further integrity measures to ensure that these taxpayer-funded benefits only go to those who deserve them.

We cannot do that, however, if Democrats continue to hold government funding hostage to appease their far-left base. It’s time for them to end the political theatrics and join Republicans in ending the government shutdown.