Reps. Greg Stanton and Yassamin Ansari drew a rhetorical line against a Republican-led government budget that doesn’t prevent widespread loss of health insurance coverage.
Neither of the Arizona Democrats from the Phoenix area urged a shutdown of the federal government during remarks Sept. 23 at the newest Valle del Sol community health center in Phoenix.
But Stanton and Ansari also held out for a funding plan that reverses GOP legislation that is expected to begin cutting access to Medicaid services in 2027, and want to avert the loss of insurance subsidies for lower-income Americans starting in January.
President Donald Trump canceled his scheduled Sept. 25 meeting with the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, calling their budget demands “unserious and ridiculous.”
In Phoenix, Stanton and Ansari reiterated their party’s emerging policy focal point: preserving health care coverage.
“I don’t presume at all that we are going to have a shutdown, and very much want to avoid a shutdown,” Stanton said. “But we are going to stand up for our values, and our values are protecting health care. We see this health care cliff right in front of us.”
It is a message similar to the one delivered by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, during a Sept. 22 appearance on CBS’ Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Let me make this perfectly clear to everybody: This is a fight over the cost of your health care,” Kelly said. “That’s all this is about. The president says no. He says he would prefer a government shutdown.”
The federal budget year ends Sept. 30. Democrats are, to this point, saying they are unwilling to agree to effectively lock in Republican program cuts that have been part of Trump’s mass layoffs and service cuts in the federal government.
They also want to extend a temporary pandemic-era provision that former President Joe Biden and Democrats passed in 2021 that lowered the out-of-pocket costs for lower-income workers who don’t have insurance through their employers.
If that program ends, it means more than 300,000 Arizonans earning up to 400% of poverty-level wages could lose subsidies and caps on total costs they have had for years.
Many Republicans have pointed to the temporary nature of the provision, and some, including Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Arizona, have backed extending the subsidies for another year.
Many Democrats, however, are treating health care as a policy imperative to reverse their poor showing in last year’s elections.
The budget stalemate has intensified as Democrats feel betrayed by earlier spending cuts that Republicans passed on party lines. Republicans, led by Trump, have said the spending cuts and layoffs have reduced waste and bloat in government.
“There’s been no negotiation so far,” Ansari said, “so if there is a government shutdown, it is entirely on Donald Trump and Republicans who are refusing to sit down at a negotiating table and … fix the issues that matter most to Americans.”
The Democrats noted they weren’t even in Washington, where some kind of deal could be brokered.
“Look, Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House,” Stanton said. “Instead of working in good faith with Democrats to negotiate a bipartisan budget deal that saves American families money, they sent us all home.”
The GOP, he said, faces a choice between negotiating a deal or allowing a shutdown that will hurt the public.
Stanton, Ansari fault GOP for stalemate as government shutdown looms
