By: Orion Donovan Smith
WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats and Republicans from the Northwest blamed each other Tuesday for an imminent government shutdown, as the Senate failed to pass a short-term spending bill amid a fight over health care costs.
Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House, but they need the support of at least seven Democratic senators to pass a bill that would continue funding the government at current levels until mid-November, buying time for Congress to finish writing full-year spending bills. But Democrats, frustrated by President Donald Trump’s policies and feeling pressure from their base to put up a fight, have chosen to use what limited leverage they have to demand Republicans reverse a recent cut to Medicaid funding and extend expiring subsidies for private health insurance.
“Look, is the president totally unfit to hold office? Yeah,” Sen. Patty Murray said in a news conference at the Capitol, acknowledging Democrats’ broader outrage over Trump’s actions. “But it’s not about that. It’s about health care. He is choosing to newshut down the government rather than work with Democrats to fix the health care crisis Republicans created.”
Republicans’ signature tax-and-spending legislation, which Trump signed into law in July, extended a wide range of tax cuts that were set to expire at year’s end, while cutting an estimated $1 trillion in Medicaid spending over a decade by largely undoing the expansion of the federally funded health care program for low-income Americans that was a hallmark of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
But the GOP bill didn’t extend tax credits that have for a decade acted as subsidies to lower the premiums Americans pay for health insurance through state marketplaces established under that 2010 law, often called Obamacare. The nonpartisan health care research organization KFF estimates that premiums would more than double if the tax credits expire at the end of 2025.
House Republicans passed a bill earlier in September that would simply continue funding federal programs at the levels established in 2024, but that measure failed in the Senate when it fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most legislation in the upper chamber. One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, opposed the bill. Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted for it, as did Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said Democrats should see the short-term funding bill as “a pretty generous offer,” because it would continue funding the government at Biden-era levels.
“For the Democrats, this really isn’t about writing a budget,” Baumgartner said by phone. “They’re just extremely frustrated with the Trump administration, and their base doesn’t think that they’re fighting hard enough, and so they have to show that they’re fighting and are going to take the government into a shutdown to demonstrate that.”
Murray and her fellow Democrats introduced their own proposal to avert a shutdown, which includes the party’s health care demands and measures to restrict Trump’s ability to cancel funding approved by Congress, but Republicans voted it down on Tuesday.
Democrats say Trump and his GOP allies in Congress are the ones who are forcing a shutdown, because they have so far refused to negotiate over the Democrats’ demands. Both parties are blaming each other, hoping the fight over government funding and health care will persuade the voters who will decide control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
That messaging battle is taking place in a fragmented media environment in which fewer Americans are getting their information from traditional news sources, said Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat whose district includes Tacoma.
While Baumgartner, Rep. Dan Newhouse and other House Republicans stayed in their home districts on Tuesday – no House votes are scheduled this week – Strickland and most of her fellow House Democrats were at the Capitol to highlight their party’s demands. Before and after talking with The Spokesman-Review, she made appearances on local TV news and several podcasts to get that message to the widest possible audience.
“We’re just here to continue to tell the American people what’s coming, but also to do everything we can to try and stop those cuts,” she said.
“We do not want the government to shut down, but if it does, it’s simply because the demands that the ‘Big, Ugly Bill’ put on the health care system are completely unacceptable,” Strickland added, using the Democrats’ preferred term to refer to the Republicans’ massive tax-and-spending law.
Initially called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, the GOP has since rebranded the bill as the “Working Families Tax Cuts,” although the legislation also contains major increases in spending on the military and immigration enforcement.
Newhouse, of Sunnyside, handles government funding as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He said he is personally open to negotiating with Democrats on health care spending. But he emphasized that government shutdowns cost taxpayers more money than just keeping the government funded – a point he has made during past funding fights when members of his own party threatened to force a shutdown.
“A lot of people depend on government services for all kinds of different things, and anytime we close the government, that shortchanges the American public,” Newhouse said by phone. “Plus, the party that is pushing for a shutdown for whatever reason never prevails and usually receives the political blame for causing the shutdown.”
The premium tax credits helped reduce the number of uninsured Americans when they were established in 2014, and Democrats made the subsidies more generous – at greater cost to taxpayers – in 2021, then extended them in 2025.
Newhouse said he would be open to a compromise to reduce the tax credits gradually and make higher-income households ineligible, but GOP leaders have insisted publicly that they won’t entertain any of the Democrats’ demands.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, whose office published a report on Thursday highlighting how the end of the subsidies would cause insurance premiums to rise even for all Americans, took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to emphasize that broader impact. She pointed out that open enrollment periods begin Nov. 1 – and Oct. 15 in Idaho – so Americans could face higher health insurance premiums before the end of the year.
“This is an issue that needs to be tackled today, not in a few weeks when you’re locked into the higher rates,” Cantwell said. “It’s not that something can be done by the end of the year, because you’re going to be locked into higher rates. This is something that Congress and the administration need to hash out now.”