Rep. Buddy Carter is right about one thing: the shutdown hurts. He lists many of those hurts, and they’re real. Where he goes wrong is in explaining why the shutdown happened and who can end it. Carter claims Senator Jon Ossoff could end the shutdown, but so could any number of Senate Republicans.
His central accusation is that “Democrats like Jon Ossoff are willing to trade the military’s paychecks for a shot at getting free, taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants.” He calls Senator Schumer a liar for saying the impasse is about health care and insists that Democrats don’t care how many Georgians they “stomp on” in the process.
I think Rep. Carter is confused about how Medicaid works, what’s in H.R. 1—the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”—and what the Senate Democrats’ continuing resolution actually proposes.
Let’s start with the basics. Medicaid has never been available to non-qualified non-citizens, Carter’s so-called “illegal aliens.” The number of people illegally receiving Medicaid is vanishingly small. The primary source of fraud in both Medicaid and Medicare is provider billing abuse, not patient ineligibility. H.R. 1 didn’t change that.
What H.R. 1 did was add new work requirements, narrow eligibility for non- citizens, and effectively codify the bureaucratic maze that many eligible Americans already struggle to navigate. That last part is especially ironic. The Republicans seem to have concluded that a bureaucratic morass need not be fixed if it produces an application process so soul-destroying that people give up. But those supposed savings are an illusion—an accounting trick. People don’t stop getting sick when they lose coverage; they wait until it’s an emergency and show up at the ER. Georgians will still pay that bill (several multiples of the supposed savings) through taxes, higher hospital fees, and higher insurance premiums.
There’s no free lunch.
The Senate Democrats’ continuing resolution, meanwhile, says nothing about immigrants or non-citizens. It’s mostly about health care. It would permanently extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which help millions of Americans—more than a million Georgians among them—afford health insurance. Those credits expire at the end of this year.
Because ACA subsidies are structured as refundable tax credits, allowing them to expire would function as a substantial middle-class tax increase—raising costs for millions of families who buy their own health insurance.
If they lapse, average marketplace premiums would roughly double, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The lowest-income families—self-employed workers, farmers, tradesmen, servers, and bartenders—could see premiums rise from about $1,200 per year today to $3000, because their subsidy would shrink. Higher income folks that see the subsidies disappear altogether could end up with $10,000 or more in additional premiums. That’s going to hurt a lot of hardworking Georgia families.
Republicans oppose the extension because it would add about $350 billion to the deficit over ten years. But H.R. 1 is projected to add $3 to $4 trillion over that same period—a ten-to-one difference. It’s hard to square that arithmetic with a claim of fiscal discipline.
It’s also hard not to cringe when Rep. Carter lectures about “Washington Democrats’ incompetence.” With control of both chambers, the White House, and a president who is a stranger to self-restraint, you might think Republicans could have accomplished something constructive. They could have closed half the tax gap—the difference between what’s owed and what’s collected—and raised $3 trillion over ten years. They could have regulated drug monopolies and saved $500 billion. Preventing improper payments in Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP could save $700 billion, reforming pharmacy benefit managers another $450 billion, and fixing immigration policy about $750 billion more. That’s $5 to $5½ trillion in potential savings without cutting services, raising taxes, or pitting Americans against one another.
Instead, the GOP fought the same fights, made the same failed proposals, embraced the same broken status quo—and left us at each other’s throats. It’s a good show of epic incompetence.
Can you fault the Democrats for pushing back?
The Republicans chose the wide gate and the broad path—the easy road. I suggest we take the narrow path, where we fix what’s broken and work toward a common good. Walking that narrow path isn’t easy, but great nations do hard things.
The Senate Democrats’ Continuing Resolution proposal, specifically extending enhanced ACA premium tax credits, can prevent a lot of harm from being done to hardworking Georgia families. It’s a beginning, not an end. It gives us some space and time to do the hard things.
John Morris
Evans, Ga.
John Morris is a veteran software developer with degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and science, technology, and public policy. He also completed doctoral coursework in industrial engineering at Georgia Tech. He has lived in Georgia for more than three decades.
