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As long as you stocked up on canned goods and toilet paper, you should be fine.Originally Posted by theGinsue
But don't panic, our benevolent leaders will soon settle their differences and get back to providing us with everything we need.
Agree with the sentiment on national parks etc.
I also think you make a valid point here - the current administration certainly could hold their ground and allow the shutdown to persist for a long time. They also could use it an an opportunity to trim lots of perceived fat.
From a federal employee standpoint, it's a knife edge: If everyone goes home during the shutdown but the train stays on the rails, it kind of confirms that those employees weren't really essential.
I do have good intel that DoD civilians are not currently being considered for a Reduction in Force (RIF) via the shutdown.
My Feedback
"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law." -Frederic Bastiat
"I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin."
― Russell Kirk, Author of The Conservative Mind
For every admin it's all theator. I know you feel your position is truth and everything else is incorrect, but we'll have a 45T deficit by the end of this term. That's not an exaggeration and that's assuming we don't have further spending increases under Trump (we already have so far).
Even Musk dropped this charade, if you lay off 10% of the employees you have an issue with, you've generated headlines and saved 0.000001% of the federal budget, while people ignore that you're spending 5% more YOY. They could fire every federal employee and it really wouldn't make up for the increases in what they are already spending just this year.
The Big Borrowing Bill demonstrated to Musk that this admin cares not about deficit. Regarding spending, what's the adage? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me once, shame on me, fool me three times, I'll still vote for you, fool me four times... We're pretty much on #4 at this point.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/obamacar...hare_permalink
The Government Shutdown Stakes for the GOP
Will the party extend pandemic ObamaCare subsidies that enrich health insurers?
As we write this, Washington seems headed toward the ritual melodrama of a government shutdown. But the stakes in this case are about more than political gamesmanship. Democrats are manufacturing a panic over ObamaCare subsidies that will test if Republicans have any stomach to curb runaway entitlements.
Democrats are warning of higher premiums if the GOP doesn?t extend turbocharged ObamaCare subsidies that expire at the end of the year. GOP leaders are already hinting that they are open to negotiating, and some are floating ideas that would give Democrats much of what they want. ?I don?t love the policy, OK?? Speaker Mike Johnson said recently. ?But I understand the political realities.? Oh, oh.
Mr. Johnson is correct that the subsidies are bad policy, though it would help if Republicans told the public the reasons. The super-charged subsidies first passed in 2021 for a Covid-19 emergency that ended long ago. Democrats juiced the subsidies for everyone, while also opening up the spigot to those earning above 400% of the poverty line.
Democrats set a 2025 expiration date to make the Inflation Reduction Act look less expensive over a 10-year budget window but fully expecting that Congress would extend the subsidies again. No Republican voted for that bill, but now some are too frightened to let the super-subsidies expire.
Despite what you may read, letting them expire wouldn?t gut the Affordable Care Act. Someone at 100% of the poverty line would still on average pay merely $3.45 a week in premiums for the cheapest middle-tier plan, according to Brian Blase of Paragon Health Institute and Trevor Carlsen of the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA). Taxpayers would still pay 98% of the premium.
The cost would run roughly $52 a week for a person at 250% of the poverty line, with taxpayers picking up more than two-thirds of the premium. These are reasonable contributions to a health plan, as most people who get insurance from private employers understand. Nearly three in four ObamaCare enrollees are below this income level.
Making these plans ?free? has allowed insurers to get paid for people who may not even know they?re enrolled. Some 40% of those in fully subsidized plans had zero claims in 2024, Paragon and the FGA estimate, a number that can?t be explained merely by healthy people not using their insurance.
Democrats don?t mention that the sweetened subsidies are attracting more Americans to the ObamaCare exchanges from better employer coverage. Messrs. Blase and Carlsen cite Congressional Budget Office data estimating that the expanded subsidies would reduce employment-based coverage by four million people. Do Republicans want to endorse that cost transfer to taxpayers?
Extending the subsidies would cost roughly $450 billion over a decade, even if Congress disguises the cost with another phony expiration date. The Trump Administration is wasting its time cutting a few billion dollars in foreign aid if it acquiesces to a half-a-trillion-dollar transfer to health insurers.
***
The GOP in Congress could at least try to talk about giving Americans more and better health insurance choices. The Trump Administration recently announced new rules letting more people purchase a less expensive catastrophic plan on the exchanges, versus only those under age 30 now. It?s a start?not that President Trump ever talks about it.
Republicans fear the politics of healthcare and are nervous about defending their changes to Medicaid in their big budget bill. One certainty: Ratifying ObamaCare subsidies won?t defuse those attacks.
Democrats want to make extension of the subsidies the price for reopening the government. But every Republican has voted to keep the government open, while Democrats are voting against funding it.
Many Republicans voted for Mr. Trump?s tax bill in June in part because he promised to restrain future spending. Giving Democrats some of their half-a-trillion-dollar subsidy demand would betray that promise.
... Diana DeGette.
27 years and counting. Term limits? Perish the thought. Look at all the good she has done. Really, look. It's pretty easy to count to zero.
Excellent example EM. Once someone's name is recognized well enough, little else matters. Term limits would help, but I wish there was an even better solution that mitigated the incumbent bias (I don't have one).
Plenty of other examples all throughout congress, of course.
Hummer.
I am self employed. I have healthcare via the healthcare exchange-there is no other way.
In Alaska 400% of family poverty level is higher than any other state at 133K for a family of 3.
This is the last year of increased subsidies. I made about 200K so Im living large. After paying my quarterly taxes my CPA told me yesterday that Ill still owe between 38-44k in taxes due mostly to paying back subsidies from healthcare tax credits, and that is after all the handouts that still exist in 2025.
In 2026 the subsidy cliff will come back, one penny over 133k and we get no subsidies. Self employment tax is about 27 percent and I really have very little that I can legally write besides mileage.
Our current health plan is 3300 a month without tax credits and expected to go up as much as 40 percent in 2026. Lets say it goes up just a fraction of that to 4000 a month, I'm paying 48,000 a year for insurance plus 27 percent self employment tax less a few write offs. I still have deductibles, out of pocket, prescriptions, etc. PLUS I still pay 100 percent of all vision, dental, and orthodontic as none of that is covered under ACA.
A lot of people will wash out of Obamacare in 2026 because they cant afford the increase, so the BIG increase is expected in 2027 when the costs are spread between fewer people.
Next year Im looking at making about the same.. 200,000 dollars. After self employment taxes and monthly healthcare premiums, that cuts my income damn near in half. Oh did I mention that I might want to retire someday so I contribute to my own 401K? I digress.. since this year after all those gravy government subsidies and my taxes, healthcare, and retirement, Im looking at taking home closer to 50k, I cant wait for 2026 where might take home nothing, and 2027 where I might actually have to pay just to exist. Its starting look like taking a minimum wage job might be our best option, more take home and expanded medicaid, all healthcare, vision, dental, 100 percent free and no pesky paperwork. I’ll also throw in that my wife, who is college educated in the medical field has been offered jobs with healthcare provided. If healthcare is offered by either spouses employee, you are not eligible for ACA healthcare exchange insurance. If she took the job, the insurance was so much she would work full time, not collect a paycheck AND I would have to write her employer a check every month to make up the difference between her income and the monthly insurance premium.
Last edited by crashdown; Yesterday at 23:40.
"What if I persuaded my caucus to say I'm going to shut the government down, I am going to not pay our bills unless I get my way? It's a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis..."
Chuck Schumer, 2013.
Last edited by eddiememphis; Today at 09:08. Reason: Stupid Question Marks in Quoted Material
Recent update:
Pick any source you want, Trump floated it on One America News Network. And he's toyed with it many times in the past, and absolutely loved branding the first progressive stimulus payments with his name.
https://nypost.com/2025/10/02/us-new...for-americans/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-t...102238786.html
This would cost oh, north of 700 Billion, vs the 300 Billion in total tariff revenues this year (which by the way, we had Tariff revenues before Trump, too), and of course, pile onto the deficit spending we currently have exceeding 2 Trillion in the red every year.
Trump has never been fiscially conservative, he's just excellent at marketing like he is.
Last edited by FoxtArt; Today at 14:40.
Stop just stop.
How dare you use their own words against them.
This is correctly called "Schumers Shut down" for a reason, he's to blame for it.
And like alot of things they doing now, their stupidity is only harming them.
Poll and after poll show people realize the Dems are responsible for this.
Last edited by Oscar77; Today at 14:46.
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