Let me make it clear that I am very sympathetic to your situation and regardless of whose fault it is, it is unfair to put you (and the hundreds of thousands of impacted government employees and contractors) at financial hardship because legislators will not do their jobs.
In terms of this shutdown, it is absolutely a situation manufactured by Republicans, and specifically by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson who has directed Republicans to not negotiate or discuss the issue of ACA tax credits (not “enhanced subsidies”) or any other issue with Democrats. There is no question of negotiation, either now or post-reconciliation bill; Republicans have been ordered to just stonewall (as also quite crudely directed by the President). That is not “just democracy in action”; that is refusal to adhere to democratic (small “d”) norms in compromise. If just this refusal to negotiate doesn’t make it clear that the Republicans want this shutdown, Mike Johnson told GOP Representatives to go home last week and on Friday declared that they should remain home this week even. though the House will be in session, so even if enough Democrats were willing to break ranks and vote for the resolution, no action on ‘reopening’ the government could possibly happen until some time next week, period. That should make it absolutely clear whose fault this is.
Of course, the issue isn’t just ACA tax credits; there are a whole host of things that this budget is funding such as an expansion of DHS and ICE, the cutting of large swaths of federal agencies and personnel, dismantling climate and weather surveillance programs, et cetera, which should also be vigorously opposed; Democrats have just picked the attempted evisceration of the ACA because it will impact tens of millions of Americans (and no, not just “ the rural states…what they voted for”) and gain the attention of people who don’t otherwise care about our rapid slide into authoritarianism and large scale and brutal persecution of people who are actually key to elements of our economy.
Your anger is well justified but the focus is not; it is Republicans who have engineered this shutdown, quite deliberately and for their own purposes, and frankly you are probably not going to be well served either way if Russ Vought gets his way of cutting a majority of federal jobs and ‘privatizing’ numerous government agencies.
Stranger