Editorial: Congress has learned nothing as another shutdown looms

Boston Herald, Boston Herald on Dec 18, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

It’s understandable that members of Congress try to remain in office for as long as they can: if they worked in the private sector, they’d be fired by now.

As the Hill reported, senators in both parties are bracing for another government shutdown next year after Republicans blocked a proposal to extend expiring health insurance subsidies. This is the same issue that triggered a 43-day government closure earlier this fall.

The shutdown finally ended when eight Democrats, mostly centrists, voted to reopen the government in hopes that Republicans might agree to a bipartisan compromise.

But “bipartisan compromise” has become an oxymoron in Washington, and the talks are foundering.

If lawmakers learned anything from the shutdown, it should have been the level of pain it inflicted on the American people. Most egregious: A halt in SNAP benefits, which had food assistance recipients panicked and scrambling. Keeping American families in need fed should have been Congress’ lodestar.

What did they learn? Nothing.

The concept of funding-as-leverage is back among Democrats, with the Jan. 30 government funding deadline the target to force Republicans to make major concessions on federal health care spending.

“The fight is not over,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Can lawmakers please leave American families out of this fight? Surely they read the news stories of worried families straining food banks and citizens organizing help for community members. “We the people” doesn’t mean that ordinary Americans step up as our representatives’ in-fighting lays waste to federal assistance.

We’re in this together, unless you’re a Capitol Hill elitist, protected by the shortages you impose on voters.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called the Republican vote against extending the enhanced subsidies “an outrage.”

What’s outrageous is that these enhanced subsidies, passed as part of a COVID relief package under the Biden administration, were set to expire at the end of this year. They went into effect under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, and extended by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

That’s three to four years that could have been spent coming up with a forward-thinking plan. Three to four years to reach some sort of compromise, come up with another way to ease health care costs. Does no one have a calendar in Washington?

But the kick-the-can-down-the road mentality brought us here, on the heels of a government shutdown and staring down the barrel of another. Now the focus is on playing keep-away with “leverage.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is pushing hard to get a package of five appropriations bills passed next month to take away leverage from Senate Democratic progressives who want to threaten another shutdown to squeeze Republicans to back another Obamacare subsidy extension, according to The Hill.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, warned that if most of those bills are left in limbo by the end of January, Democrats could replay the shutdown strategy.

“They may be tempted to do it, as disastrous as the last one was,” he said.

Voters deserve better than this.