Just as everybody knows who started the war in Ukraine, everybody knows the party to blame for the big jump in health insurance premiums. And we know who tried to cut off SNAP benefits, fired thousands of government workers and caused airline chaos. It wasn’t Sen. Richard Durbin of Springfield. He and a few other adults in the Democrat room finally ended the shutdown, to the consternation of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Hakeem Jeffries and most of the other Democrats. It’s not as though their shutdown health care holdout was working. No, it will likely require midterm elections to clean up the looming Republican Medicaid disaster. Meanwhile Durbin, the whip who knows how to put votes together in a tough political fight, will take the blame for capitulation. And he’ll likely get no credit for government jobs saved, food aid restored and families making their flights for Thanksgiving. But Springfield knows political courage when we see it. Thanks, Senator Durbin. – Fletcher Farrar, editor
This article appears in November 13-19, 2025.
=looming Republican Medicaid disaster=
Medicaid and Obamacare are a disaster but not a Republican disaster. Just the opposite. It is the Democrats who have originated and run these programs into the ground. The only answer they ever have is not true reform but just more taxes.
Obamacare was passed in 2010 and everyone, and I mean everyone, knew it was purposely underfunded in the legislation in order to get it passed. You know get it passed (the camels nose in the tent) and then deal with it (more taxes) later. Medicaid costs for the state of Illinois have been astronomical for decades. And the Pritzker administration has given money to illegal aliens health care at a cost of over $1,000,000,000.
Has the GOP come up with plans to deal with these issues at either the state or national level. NO, they have not. But to blame it on the GOP is most disingenuous.
I’ve gotta hand it to ya, Fletcher. The rest of the democrats just brazenly lied when blaming Trump and the republicans for the recent shutdown.
You, on the other hand, at least attempt to maintain some form of diluted integrity by being obtuse and confusing while admitting that the democrats ended the shutdown that they started.
While heaping praise on Durbin, you forgot to mention that he voted 14 times to keep the shutdown going before he voted to end it. He had no problem using the poor needy single moms and air traffic controllers as hostages when he thought it might work to achieve his goals.