Was the Vote to End Shutdown a Compromise or Surrender?  

Both political parties blamed each other for the shutdown. Democrats refused for six weeks to agree to the short-term spending bill that ultimately passed because they wanted to extend tax credits that lower the cost of health coverage. 

Republicans said they told the Democrats back in September that a government shutdown wouldn’t achieve their desired result — and it didn’t. Democrats said the shutdown dragged on because Republicans refused to compromise. 

Much is left unresolved. 

Republicans said last week they’ll have a policy discussion on the healthcare tax credits in December, but there’s no guarantee it will pass. 

Brown says that when the Affordable Care Act, also referred to as Obamacare, enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of the year, her 76-year-old mother won’t be able to afford a doctor visit. 

“It’s just heartbreaking because we are human beings that depend on being able to go to the doctor for preventative care,” she said. “My mom is a breast cancer survivor, and it is imperative that she has her medicine and that she can go to the doctor and afford the cost of living. Even though [my parents] know how to survive with less than, they shouldn’t have to in a country where we have the funding to provide free medical care for all.” 

Whether there’s money in the bank to provide medical care for everyone is subject to debate. The federal debt was listed at around $38 trillion last month. 

Vikram Maheshri, an economics professor at the University of Houston, said the details of what prompted the government shutdown — and why it lasted so long — are complicated but the solution is not. 

“We have to make more money and spend less money,” he said. “We have to do one or both of those things and I think it’s going to have to be both of those. You make more money by raising taxes and you spend less money by cutting programs. We’ll have to do both of those, and hopefully we can do that in a wise way.”

“It’s surprising to me that we had such a long period without any inflation in the United States but the music is going to stop at some point and it’s going to keep exerting upward pressure,” he added. 

None of the proposals on either side related to the spending bill that passed November 12 “would have done anything meaningful on the debt,” Maheshri said. 

“The conversation about the debt is a much bigger conversation,” he said. “We spend more than we take in. We do that structurally. That’s the policy of the United States. It’s one thing to do that in emergencies, but it’s another thing when that’s kind of baked into governing. At some point, you do have to pay your debts. The bill comes due.” 

A 35-day government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019 cost the U.S. economy an estimated $11 billion in lost productivity, according to The Guardian. Maheshri said he didn’t know how much the recent shutdown cost but the economy — already in a state that no one would refer to as robust — definitely took a hit.

“It’s highly likely that federal employees will be made whole,” Maheshri said. “We’ll be paying people for the last month and they didn’t do any work, so that’s a loss to the taxpayer. Then there are lots of other costs. The most salient one is in travel. It’s not like people can get their weekend of airport delays back. I don’t have an estimate offhand but I would assume the cost of these delays is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” 

Small businesses were put on hold and anyone in the service industry who worked with government employees lost business, the professor added. 

“We have our blinders and we see what we see,” he said. “I went on one plane trip in the last month or so, and nothing happened there. I wasn’t trying to buy a house. I’m a state employee, and I’m not relying on the federal government for assistance right now. It didn’t really affect me, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have big effects. The general climate of uncertainty doesn’t help. It doesn’t allow you to make long-term plans.” 

Compromise or Surrender?

Early last week, House Democratic Caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York asked for a three-year Affordable Care Act tax credit extension. “We have an affordability crisis and Republicans are burying their heads in the sand,” he said at the time. The proposal failed. 

As it became clear that the Democrats weren’t going to get their way, Jeffries vowed to continue fighting for affordable healthcare. “This fight is not over,” he said the night of the House vote. “We’re just getting started.”

The funding agreement passed the Senate because eight Democrats “caved” and voted to end the shutdown, although they’re getting no money to fund healthcare for undocumented persons or for Obamacare subsidies. 

“No real concessions were made by Republicans other than a handshake deal to hold a vote on Obamacare subsidies in December, which is VERY unlikely to pass,” conservative political commentator Nick Sortor reported. 

In late September, Democrats said they would not vote for a funding bill unless Republicans agreed to extend healthcare subsidies. The party was united, the New York Times reported. 

“But Trump stands in the bully pulpit and has control of the government,” according to Sam Sifton’s November 11 Times column. “Despite legal challenges, he found ways to pay for some parts of the government (the military, law enforcement) and cut off others (food stamp benefits, as well as federally funded projects in states led by Democrats).”

“So Democrats are back where they started,” Sifton wrote. “For many, the decision brought to mind clichés about the party that have circulated since they lost the election in 2024: They are ineffective. They laid out an ultimatum, and then changed their minds.”

Trade-offs must occur when bargaining is in play, Maheshri said. 

“If you set a line and say, I am not going to budge unless X happens, and maybe you’re willing to budge for a little less than X happening, and you’re OK with that relative to status quo, the tradeoff is that if you budge for less than that, you get something better right now but this could potentially affect future negotiations because you lose credibility,” he said. 

“If you concede without getting what you wanted, then it will be easier for that to happen in the future,” he added. 

Affordable healthcare was already in jeopardy prior to the debate over Obamacare. About $800 billion was slashed from Medicaid when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July.

Texas Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, who is running for U.S. Senate, issued a statement on November 9 urging Congress not to cave. “Any ‘deal’ that kicks 1.7 million Texans off their health insurance isn’t compromise; it’s surrender,” he said. 

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat who served 27 years in the Texas Senate, issued a statement after the House vote saying that “the deal ignores the most urgent crisis facing working families: the loss of affordable healthcare.”

“By failing to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, it puts lives on the chopping block,” Ellis said. “Nearly 700,000 Harris County residents, and millions more across the country, could see their premiums skyrocket by hundreds or even thousands of dollars. For many, that means losing coverage entirely.”

“Texas already has the highest uninsured rate in the nation,” he added. “While the governor and the state legislature refuse to expand Medicaid, the ACA saves lives. Walking away from these protections is not compromise. It’s surrender.”

The commissioner urged Congress, who he says “created this disaster” to extend the ACA premium tax credits. 

“All people deserve the same basic guarantees: to go to sleep at night without fear that a trip to the ER will bankrupt them, to buy groceries without sacrificing next month’s rent, to work and live with dignity,” he said. 

Brown, 45, is the cofounder and executive director of Bridges 2 Empowerment, a Houston-based nonprofit that focuses on voter education and engagement and reformative care for those impacted by the criminal justice system..

She said she was removed from Affordable Care Act insurance because she hasn’t filed tax returns in two years. She’s getting her affairs in order and may be able to get back on an insurance plan but until then, she just doesn’t go to the doctor. She said last week she expected that the spending bill would pass but was disappointed that the Democrats didn’t get anything in return. 

Brown said she hopes the Democrats will leverage this opportunity and the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration into mobilizing voters to oust Republicans in the 2026 elections. 

“I think, come December, the Republicans are going to show who they really are,” she said. “We’re all frustrated and angry, but there is a major election coming up next year. The House of Representatives needs to make sure they have a hell of a message to keep the momentum going.” 

“If I was [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and I saw that I had lost influence of eight Democrats, I would immediately determine how we could come up with a message that would encourage my party to keep fighting that does not make it seem like we are losers or victims or some way, some how, because the government is opening back up, that it’s an end-all to our fight for healthcare,” she added. 

There also needs to be a plan in place for when the funding agreement expires in January, Brown added. 

“There’s a potential for another shutdown once this funding runs out in January,” she said. “How are the Democrats working together to figure out what happens in January?” 

Maheshri agreed that another shutdown in the near future is a possibility. 

“The fundamental issues have not been hashed out. We don’t have a budget, which is problematic, and this decision point is going to keep coming up over and over again,” he said. “This doesn’t demonstrate that we are equipped to make decisions wisely. I bet if you asked 100 people what the odds are that we’re going to have another shutdown in the next two years, nobody’s going to say zero.” 

A Path Forward? 

Brown said the current situation is reflective of a poor economy with limited access to healthcare and the absence of a living wage. 

“What really made America great was people working and being able to afford their own healthcare,” she said. “They need to make America for the middle class again, because the middle class is our foundation.” 

The Democrats’ narrative has been that the GOP only wants to line the pockets of their billionaire buddies, but in fact, Republicans also have constituents who want affordable healthcare. They just claim they don’t have a way to pay for it. The enhanced premium tax credits were never intended to be permanent, Republican leaders have said.

Maheshri pointed out that there hasn’t been a “wholesale abandonment of Obamacare;” it’s the tax credits that are being debated. 

Democratic Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, who represents Houston’s District 7 and recently filed for re-election, held a webinar on November 6 with representatives from the American Federation of Government Employees and Community Health Choice to share resources and information with constituents.

Fletcher voted against the spending bill and said after it passed that it fails to meet the needs of the American people and includes “corrupt payments to senators.” She’s referring to a provision that would allow senators to retroactively sue the federal government for damages of at least $500,000 per violation if their phone records or data were accessed without prior notification. 

The Associated Press reported that “the language seems aimed at helping Republican senators pursue damages if their phone records were analyzed by the FBI as part of an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.”

Fletcher said in a statement that she wished a bill had been presented that addressed the health care crisis. She co-authored several amendments that were not considered, she said.

“Instead, this bill does nothing to address the health care crisis, includes no input from House Democrats on short- or long-term funding provisions, and contains obscene provisions guaranteeing eight Republican Senators at least one million dollars each,” she said. “I cannot vote for that.”

Every Texan, an independent nonprofit that advocates for public policies to achieve equitable access to quality health care, food security, education, and good jobs, noted in an email that, while senators who crafted the funding bill have said they will consider legislation in December to extend the tax credit enhancements, “lawmakers have met few of the promises they’ve made in the last year during negotiations over deep cuts to key public benefit programs.”

“Without a December agreement to extend current tax credit levels, Marketplace insurance costs will multiply for nearly 4 million small business owners and employees, entrepreneurs, self-employed people, part-time workers, unemployed people, and children from middle-income families who rely on Marketplace health insurance to afford healthcare,” said Lorna Ramage, deputy communications director at Every Texan. 

A September report from Texas A&M University estimated that about 1.5 million Texans will opt not to re-enroll in Marketplace insurance plans for 2026 because of rising monthly premiums. 

Maheshri said a good strategy for members of both political parties going forward would be to communicate honestly. He believes the American people are capable of being spoken to like adults, he said. 

“I think you tell people, this is the problem. This is how much we spend, and this is how much we take in taxes,” he said. “In order to get this in order, if we make these changes to the tax code, this is how much we’re going to get. If we make these changes to expenditures, this is what we’re going to get over time. This is what the [Congressional Budget Office] tries to do but it’s not being communicated to people like they’re adults. It’s being communicated by cynical politicians who are trying to push whatever their favorite agenda is.”

“I might be completely delusional but I think there’s an appetite for some type of figure to speak honestly and directly and say, ‘Guys, there are tradeoffs here.’ It’s all being pitched as a free lunch, and we can spend this money but it’ll pay for itself. That’s really attractive but it’s not honest,” he said. 

Maheshri said ideally, a bipartisan group of lawmakers with some personal connection to each other would get together and “sit in a room for a while, hash out a plan and present that plan.”

“It seems to me that’s going to be tough because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of appetite for going against what the president says on the Republican side,” he said. “I think Democrats are scared to compromise as well because they’re trying to look tough. The hope would be that you can get a few people in a room who are thinking about the bigger picture.” 

It appears, at least for now, that some Americans believe a government shutdown equals starving families and a government reopened equals sick people unable to get treatment. Brown says it doesn’t have to be that way. 

She said she understands that some people are going to wish the Democrats had held out longer and others are going to wish they’d caved sooner. The key, she said, is presenting a united front rather than fighting with each other. 

“I’m not in that arena, I’m not there, but I’d like to figure out a way to make this a win for the Democrats,” she said. “Democrats are not saying ‘healthcare or groceries,’ but right now, that’s the message that’s out there.”

“We don’t know how to stop and reset and make a chess move,” she added. “We just react like we’re playing checkers.” 

This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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