Besides crippling inflation that outpaced incomes during the tenure of former President Joe Biden, guaranteeing that former Vice President Kamala Harris’ own presidential bid would fail, another key issue that catapulted President Donald Trump back into the White House was Democrats’ failure to secure the southern border and enforce federal immigration laws.
Those two issues, the economy and immigration, made Biden a one-term president and to this day sees Democratic Party favorability at record lows at just 33 percent as of this writing, according to latest national average of polls compiled by RealClearPolling.com.
Now, Congressional Democrats are once again threatening a partial government shutdown unless their demands to provide taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens are met. They lost the election on illegal immigration, and naturally, to them, that means taxpayers should have to pay for illegal immigrants.
The Democratic Party counterproposal takes apart pieces of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and would come in at an estimated price tag of some $662 billion added to the deficit over the next decade according to the Congressional Budget Office and even then, would only fund the government until Oct. 31.
That includes $349.8 billion to make permanent the expanded premium tax credit under the 2021 American Rescue Plan and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that substantially increased Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies, $40.3 billion to repeal a 2025 Department of Health and Human Services regulation that removes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from ACA marketplaces and $271.8 billion to repeal sections of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cut waste, fraud and abuse from Obamacare.
That includes repealing sections 71301, 71302, 71303, 71304, and 71305 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which explicitly bar illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded health care. Just click on the link and look up those sections to see for yourself the sections of the bill Democrats want gone.
The proposal is more or less dead on arrival. Democrats neither have a majority in the House nor the Senate, and with President Donald Trump in the White House, even if by some miracle their proposal passed, it would be vetoed. So, what’s the point?
There are not the votes to pass it even on bare majorities, let alone the 60 votes needed in the Senate.
In the meantime, the Republican proposal is a no-frills extension of current spending until Nov. 21 — it only changes spending by about a net $1.1 billion around the edges according to the Congressional Budget Office — providing more time for House and Senate appropriators to work on what will otherwise be a year-end omnibus spending bill or else another year-long continuing resolution, effectively freezing spending at last year’s levels.
In 2024, Republicans won majorities in the House, Senate and White House as President Trump pulled off one of the greatest political comebacks in American history, largely on the issue of securing the border and dealing with the 10.8 million illegal aliens who infiltrated the homeland during Biden’s tenure of office.
All Democrats can do is filibuster in the Senate and say no but at the end of the day, without a single chamber of Congress backing them up, they lack the leverage to do anything other than throw a temper tantrum on national television.
All for illegal aliens who are not even supposed to be here. In the meantime, do Democrats really want the White House and DOGE figuring out who’s an essential employee and how big the reduction in force is going to be during the partial government shutdown?
But by all means, let’s call more attention to this issue while President Trump has the bully pulpit and will be able to explain it all line by line to the American people why the federal government is being locked down to provide taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens. Republicans can talk about that all day long and won’t lose a single vote over it.
And at the end of the day, nothing will come of it. Democrats have no path, zero, to pass their bill. All a government shutdown will do is make another year-long continuing resolution where nothing changes more likely to end the pause in funding when the Democrats finally buckle under the pressure — which is guaranteed. They have no cards to play.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
