U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer: The Schumer Shutdown is hurting Alabamians
As I write this, we are 10 days into the Schumer Shutdown. When asked about the government shutdown during an interview with Punchbowl News last week, Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Every day gets better for us.”
I doubt most Americans would agree.
Every day of the government shutdown is another day that Schumer is trying to save his Senate seat. On one hand, Schumer is deathly afraid that he will lose the next primary election to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). On the other, he now faces a Marxist/socialist base in the Democratic Party that he must placate if he expects to stay in power.
So, what are Schumer and the radical Democrats demanding? They want to provide free healthcare for illegal aliens paid for with the taxes of American workers. They want to repeal the entire healthcare section of the One Big Beautiful Bill. That section includes work requirements for able-bodied adults who are getting Medicaid and SNAP benefits, formerly called food stamps, ending the duplication of benefits and eliminating fraud that is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
They want to repeal the Rural Health Transformation Program for addressing the healthcare accessibility crisis in America’s rural counties. The life expectancy for people living in rural areas is over three years less than for those in cities with better access to quality health care. The suicide rate is higher for rural residents, and the infant mortality rate is 27% higher than in the metropolitan areas.
The Rural Health Transformation Program was designed and put in place to allow each state to address these and other issues with rural health to provide better access and higher quality of care, especially for maternity care. There are rural areas in Alabama where pregnant women are having to drive two hours to deliver their baby or see a doctor during their pregnancy. Yet Schumer and his Democrat colleagues want to take away these funds to pay for free healthcare for illegal aliens including those who have committed crimes.
Schumer thinks the government shutdown is politically good for him and his Marxists/socialists propagandists, but it is not good for Alabama or the rest of America. While the government is shut down, 57,000 Alabamians in the federal workforce are furloughed or working without pay, and military families have no idea when they will receive their next paycheck. CNN even reported that “Democrats say even missed paychecks for US troops won’t be enough to end [the] shutdown alone.”
The 7,000 seniors in Alabama who have their Social Security checks mailed are likely to see delays. Each week the shutdown extends, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that Alabama’s Gross State Product will decline by approximately $169 million. In addition, federal funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program stops immediately and becomes reliant on very limited local contingency funding, hurting approximately 112,000 WIC recipients in Alabama who rely on the program for nutritional support for themselves and their children.
My Republican colleagues and I did our job in the House. On Sept. 19, we voted for a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government open through Nov. 21 to give the House and Senate appropriators more time to finish their work on the appropriations bills. The House CR was transmitted to the Senate where Schumer immediately initiated a filibuster to prevent it from getting to the Senate floor for a vote. Breaking the filibuster will take 60 votes, which means seven Democrats will have to join all the Senate Republicans. Thus far, only three Democrats have voted with the Republicans.
Schumer and the Democrats are choosing to prioritize their radical agenda over the well-being of Americans. This shutdown is not a failure of bipartisan cooperation; it is the result of one party refusing to govern responsibly. It’s time for Democrats to stop holding the country hostage and put the American people first.