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House Progressives Denounce 'Morally Bankrupt' Bill to End Shutdown Without Healthcare Guarantee
"Make no mistake, people will die from these skyrocketing healthcare costs, paired with Republicans’ brutal Medicaid cuts," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Nov 12, 2025
As the US House appears likely to vote Wednesday to reopen the government, House progressives issued a scathing rebuke to their Democratic colleagues in the Senate who voted for a funding bill with no guarantee to protect the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans.
With the backing of leadership, the continued resolution was advanced by a group of eight Senate Democrats this weekend to end what has been the longest shutdown in US history.
In a joint statement, the 94-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) announced its opposition to the stopgap funding bill, which it said "includes no provisions to guarantee affordable healthcare and protect tens of millions of Americans from massive price spikes to their premiums, and imposes no strong guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from violating appropriations laws."
The bill agrees to fund the government until the end of 2026, without a deal to extend ACA subsidies that, if allowed to expire at the end of the year, will result in more than 20 million Americans seeing their insurance premiums more than double, according to analysis by KFF. It also introduces no new provisions to prevent President Donald Trump from refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress, nor does it address the nearly $1 trillion worth of Medicaid cuts passed in July’s GOP spending bill.
"The Senate-passed bill is a betrayal of working people and massively fails to address the urgent needs of the American people,” said CPC Deputy Chair Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “Instead of working toward a fair deal, House Republicans refused to negotiate and abdicated their duty to serve the American people."
"The Senate-passed bill is morally bankrupt. It is indefensible to allow more than 20 million Americans to see their premiums double and let millions lose their healthcare coverage. Healthcare is a human right, and this bill contradicts that fundamental principle," Omar continued. "Make no mistake, people will die from these skyrocketing healthcare costs, paired with Republicans’ brutal Medicaid cuts."
After over a month of holding out, Democrats ultimately cracked under the White House's use of the shutdown to punish segments of the American public: Government workers hit with mass layoffs, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients illegally denied this month’s benefits, and residents of blue states and cities stripped of congressionally appropriated funding for critical infrastructure.
While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) voted no on the deal to break the Democratic filibuster, he is widely understood to be the driving force behind the agreement, supporting the clique of eight Democratic senators who voted with the GOP—none of whom face reelection in 2026—to take the fall.
In the aftermath of the cave, Schumer has faced calls from several House Democrats to step down from leadership, including Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Mike Levin (Calif.). However, none in the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have joined in that push, even though any one of them could force a vote on his leadership within seven days.
As part of the Senate deal, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) promised that Republicans would hold a vote to extend healthcare subsidies within 40 days. But CPC chairman Greg Casar dismissed it as "nothing but a pinky promise."
“A deal that doesn’t reduce healthcare costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them,” Casar said. “Millions of families would pay the price.”
The CPC has said it will vote no when the bill comes to the House for a vote on Wednesday, as have most other Democrats.
“I will not support any deal that doesn’t improve the lives of working Americans,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the co-chair of the CPC political action committee. “End of story.”
In the GOP-controlled chamber, Democrats cannot stop the bill on their own. But Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can only afford to lose two Republicans, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already signaled that he will vote no.
While others, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), have expressed concern and disgust toward her GOP colleagues over the bill's lack of a solution to the looming healthcare apocalypse, there's no indication that enough Republicans will defect to kill the resolution.
On Tuesday, Republicans in the House voted down a Democratic amendment that would have extended ACA subsidies for three years.
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We Were Right When We Said 'Don't Run, Joe.' Now We Say: 'Step Down, Chuck'
Senate Democrats’ collapse in the latest government funding fight is just the latest example of the party’s inability to advance bold members to positions of power, opting instead for milquetoast and uninspiring leadership.
Nov 12, 2025
In late 2022, RootsAction, the organization where I serve as political director, called for Joe Biden not to run for reelection. We were, we felt, simply saying out loud what had been whispered within the party for months—that Biden was too weak, politically and personally, to stop Donald Trump from winning a second term. Party activists and the international press took us seriously, but among party elites and the mainstream US media we were alternately derided and ignored.
Biden did ultimately heed our advice, but nearly two years too late. The cataclysmic effects of that disastrous delay are now playing out.
By now, of course, it is common wisdom that Biden should not have sought reelection, almost no matter whom you ask. Despite that, the Democratic Party has apparently learned very little from the Biden debacle. The same tendencies that enabled Biden’s ego-driven march for a second term are still on display today: deference to seniority, fear of bucking decorum, and a general strategic paralysis that has taken hold of the Democratic Party since Trump first won the presidency in 2016.
Senate Democrats’ collapse in the latest government funding fight is just the latest example of the party’s inability to advance bold members to positions of power, opting instead for milquetoast and uninspiring leadership.
Without a steady hand on the rudder, Senate Democrats fractured and failed to hold the line in a battle they had themselves set up.
By the end of this week, the funding “deal” that Senate Democrats have enabled will likely be on the books, as House Democrats will be unable to stop the legislation from making its way to Trump’s desk. After enduring the longest government shutdown in history, what Senate Democrats have to show for their capitulation is a promise from Republican leaders that there will, eventually, be a vote on extending the healthcare premiums assistance over which Democrats had ostensibly withheld their votes in the first place.
Those Democrats achieved nothing to restore Medicaid cuts. And with Republicans unlikely to back legislation bolstering the Affordable Care Act, Democrats have squandered the strategic leverage they held in the budget fight and likely doomed more millions of Americans to a future without adequate healthcare.
While many Democrats bear responsibility for caving on this fight—especially the seven Democrats and one independent who voted for the Republican budget proposal in the Senate—no one individual is more responsible than the Senate minority leader: Chuck Schumer. While Schumer himself voted against the proposal, a party leader’s responsibility goes far beyond his own votes in Congress. He or she is chiefly responsible for leading the party’s caucus, especially through difficult votes. That Schumer allowed his caucus to splinter in this critical standoff is a resounding indictment of his leadership.
Recent polling showed voters blaming Republicans more than Democrats for the government shutdown and the ensuing disorder it created. That same polling also showed a majority of voters of any party agreeing that Democrats should continue to hold the line on healthcare funding cuts, even if it meant prolonging the shutdown. And, Democrats just welcomed a slew of wins on Election Day, with strong evidence that voters are already tiring of Trump’s nihilistic second term. With the political winds in their favor, why would Democratic leadership allow its members to take an unpopular and politically costly vote?
In moments like these, Democrats often resort to arguments about electability—that is, that members need to take votes that may not be popular with the majority sentiment within the Democratic Party to appease voters in their district or state. However, none of the eight Democrats who voted for the Republican-led funding bill are up for reelection in 2026. To argue that these candidates would have been held to account for voting against reopening the government, in 2025, in the 2028 election cycle or beyond stretches credulity.
We are left to conclude that the party suffered from a lack of clear leadership, and for this, Schumer bears sole responsibility. Without a steady hand on the rudder, Senate Democrats fractured and failed to hold the line in a battle they had themselves set up.
This failure comes on the heels of numerous missteps Schumer has recently made. These include his refusal to endorse or embrace Zohran Mamdani (whom RootsAction was among the first national groups to endorse), the mayor-elect of New York City, even while Schumer’s corporatist Democrat colleagues grudgingly came to support the charismatic rising star. Schumer also has declined to put any distance between himself and the ongoing genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel. Even as polling shows that just 10% of Democrats support Israel’s military actions, Schumer posed for photos with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his most recent visit to the US.
Simply put, Schumer is not the man for the moment. The Democrats will remain out of power in Congress at least until January 2027. For the party to stay relevant and attract voters, it must win the public relations war against Republicans and Trump. This means taking bold, principled stances, and defending those positions, even under intense pressure from Republicans. Schumer is either unwilling or unable to lead the party in these efforts. Many within his own party have taken notice, too. In the last few days, House members like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), and others have harshly criticized Schumer’s leadership ability; Khanna has explicitly called for Schumer to leave the leader position.
Other Democrats and fellow travelers stand ready to pick up the mantle: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for example, is still the most popular elected official in the country, and he has consistently argued that Democrats should take stronger stances against Trump. Or, Schumer could abdicate his role in favor of a younger and actually progressive senator, facilitating a generational change of the guard that has lately eluded the party.
Biden’s failure to recognize that he had fallen out of favor with his own party led directly to the waking nightmare of the second Trump administration. Let’s not make the same mistakes. It’s time for new leadership that’s aligned with the desires of Democratic Party voters: to fight Trumpism and push for progressive populism that speaks directly to the economic needs of working people.
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Schumer Has Betrayed Us for the Last Time; We Need New Leadership
If Democrats are going to really confront Trump’s authoritarianism and the corporate corruption that fuels it—which is absolutely necessary now to rescue and sustain American democracy—we need a Senate leader with a spine, not a strategist for surrender.
Nov 11, 2025
What we witnessed this weekend in the United States Senate wasn’t “compromise.” It was surrender: the kind of gutless, morally bankrupt capitulation that betrays American families and feeds the billionaires devouring our democracy.
Eight Senators who caucus with the Democrats joined Republicans to end the government shutdown, not in victory, not to secure healthcare for millions, but to hand President Donald Trump and his morbidly rich cronies a gift-wrapped political win.
And standing at the center of this disgrace is Chuck Schumer, the so-called “leader” of the Senate Democrats, who orchestrated—or at least approved or failed to stop—the entire debacle from behind the curtain, then had the gall to vote “no” at the last minute to wash his hands of it.
Let’s be clear: This was Schumer’s deal. He built it, he pushed it, and he enabled it. His fingerprints are all over this betrayal.
Americans are sick of being sold out. We’re done watching our supposed champions cave while billionaires pop champagne.
And what did Democrats get in exchange for reopening the government? What did the American people get? Nothing.
Not a penny restored to Medicaid (or the hit Medicare will take in a year under Trump’s Big Ugly Bill). Not a rollback of Trump’s rescissions that gutted essential agencies. Not even a meaningful vote to protect Affordable Care Act subsidies or food stamps.
The so-called “promise” of a vote in the Senate within 40 days is a joke, a political placebo meant to sedate the public while the insurance industry counts its profits.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was right to call Sunday evening’s vote a “very bad night.” The deal explodes healthcare premiums for over 20 million Americans and paves the way for 15 million to lose coverage altogether.
That lack of coverage, experts estimate, will cause 50,000 preventable deaths a year. These are real people and their children, their deaths sacrificed at the altar of Trump’s and the GOP’s lust for wealth and power.
And it wasn’t just cowardice: it was also cash.
The healthcare industry owns far too many Democrats, and this vote appears to prove it. The same corporations that profit from denying you care are stuffing the pockets of the very lawmakers who just “compromised” your future.
When Democrats vote with Republicans to gut healthcare, it’s not bipartisanship. It’s corruption, legalized and laundered through Citizens United campaign finance loopholes created by five bought-and-paid-for Republicans on the Supreme Court. Bribery by another name.
Chuck Schumer has presided over this kind of rot for years, protecting incumbents who serve donors instead of voters, blowing up efforts to promote genuine progressives like Bernie in 2016, while building a machine that runs on Wall Street money and insurance and banking industry cash. He was so ineffective he couldn’t even stop Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) back in the day, even though he wields enormous power.
Schumer’s’ leadership—and, generally, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee since the 1990s Clinton years—have turned the Democratic Party from the party of FDR into a cautious club managed by well-paid consultants who tremble at their own shadows while they fill their bank accounts with blood money.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump is showing us exactly what real political power looks like, as well as what it fears.
The simple reality is that Trump was about to break. He was freaking out.
Before the eight Democratic-caucusing Senators caved to the GOP, Trump was so frantic that he was demanding Senate Republicans end the filibuster altogether, so he could “ram through legislation that will make sure no Democrat ever gets elected again.”
America—and Democrats—deserve statesmen and women willing to call out corruption in their own ranks; to reject the blood money of lobbyists; and to stand unflinchingly for universal healthcare, living wages, and democracy itself.
GOP leaders—including (and especially) Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.)—are terrified at the possibility of ending the filibuster, not out of principle, but out of self-preservation. They know ending it could expose just how extreme and deranged the Republican agenda really is.
As I’ve argued before, the filibuster has been a scam for a half century, a tool that since the Reagan era both Republicans and corporate Democrats alike use every year to fool their base and donors into thinking their hands are tied.
It obscures Republican radicalism, while similarly protecting the so-called “moderate” Democrats who spit shine the boots of their corporate masters.
Trump believes killing the filibuster will increase his power. In reality, it would tear his party apart and lay bare its madness for the world to see because Republicans could no longer say, “We couldn’t pass that bill to [fill in the blank] because those damn Democrats filibustered it.”
But the filibuster should be ended, and if these eight Democrats hadn’t surrendered, Trump might have forced it. That would’ve been the best thing for America.
And make no mistake: Trump’s terrified or he wouldn’t have even considered killing the filibuster. As Steve Bannon bluntly said, if Democrats ever regain full control, “a lot of Republicans are going to prison.” Presumably including Trump himself.
Compounding Trump’s freak-out, alleged horrors are leaking out about how Trump appears in the Epstein files. Reporter David Schuster noted:
A few GOP House members say they’ve heard from FBI/DOJ contacts that the Epstein files (with copies in different agencies) are worse than Michael Wolff’s description of Epstein photos showing Trump with half naked teenage girls.
Trump knows what’s in those files; he partied with Epstein for a decade and is now throwing bennies at Ghislaine Maxwell to try to keep her quiet. That’s why he’s trying to distract his supporters by hosting his Great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago, making incoherent threats about cash check “rebates” to Americans and war in Venezuela, and hustling billions from foreign dictators to insulate himself and his boys before the walls close in.
If Democrats are going to really confront Trump’s authoritarianism and the corporate corruption that fuels it—which is absolutely necessary now to rescue and sustain American democracy—we need a Senate leader with a spine, not a strategist for surrender. Chuck Schumer’s brand of 90s politics, to triangulate, capitulate, and hope nobody notices, has failed us for decades.
He embodies the rot of the old guard: a generation of post-1992 Democrats who think fundraising prowess equals political courage.
It doesn’t. Times have changed, and we’re now standing in the midst of a progressive populist era. Just look at New York’s mayoral race.
Leadership means fighting for working families, not finessing deals for donors. It means standing up to Trumpism, not whispering in back rooms while pretending to resist.
We need new leadership. America—and Democrats—deserve statesmen and women willing to call out corruption in their own ranks; to reject the blood money of lobbyists; and to stand unflinchingly for universal healthcare, living wages, and democracy itself.
Americans are sick of being sold out. We’re done watching our supposed champions cave while billionaires pop champagne. The fight for our democracy won’t be won by appeasing bullies or bowing to donors.
It’ll be won when Democrats rediscover their courage, and when Chuck Schumer finally steps aside to be replaced by a true fighter.
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