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As the current government shutdown enters its fourth week with no end in sight — making it the second-longest U.S. shutdown in history — two new polls suggest that most Americans are faulting Republicans for the standoff, with a plurality saying they support Democrats in Congress demanding negotiations on health care.
President Donald Trump has thus far refused to discuss a possible solution to the crisis. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has also dug his heels in, claiming at times that he has nothing to negotiate at all, and stating this week that his conference of GOP lawmakers is “probably 99.8 percent” united on his strategy to refuse negotiations.
Democrats, meanwhile, are also holding out, hopeful they can force Republicans to restore funding that the party recently slashed from a number of health care and social safety net programs that millions of working class Americans rely on.
According to an Economist/YouGov poll published on Tuesday, more Americans than not support that goal.
Forty-five percent of voters said Democrats should continue holding out for the restoration of health care funding, including the extension of tax credits for individuals and families on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health exchange. Only 32 percent said they should not, while around 1 in 5 voters (22 percent) were undecided.
One in six Republican voters said Democrats should keep the shutdown going in order to compel GOP lawmakers to restore the tax credits and other health care funding — indicating that, while Johnson’s group of lawmakers may be united, there are cracks within the party’s voting base on the matter.
A separate poll shows that most voters blame Republicans for prolonging the shutdown. In a Reuters/Ipsos survey published this week, 50 percent of Americans said GOP lawmakers in Congress are more at fault for prolonging the standoff, while 43 percent said Democrats deserve criticism for it.
And although the poll didn’t ask whether Democrats are doing the right thing in refusing to back down from their demands, a supermajority of voters, 72 percent, said the ACA tax subsidies should be extended, while only 22 percent said they shouldn’t be. Even a majority of Republican voters, 51 percent, said the tax credits should be restored.
A failure to restore the tax credits, which were removed by Republicans’ and Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” will lead to huge cost burdens for those who receive them. If the tax credits are not extended in the immediate future, up to 24 million people could be affected, increasing total costs for that group by $23 billion next year. And if no changes are made beyond that date, those who had received the tax credits could pay a combined $335 billion in higher premium costs over the next decade.
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