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House Progressives Denounce 'Morally Bankrupt' Bill to End Shutdown Without Healthcare Guarantee
"Make no mistake, people will die from these skyrocketing healthcare costs, paired with Republicans’ brutal Medicaid cuts," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Nov 12, 2025
As the US House appears likely to vote Wednesday to reopen the government, House progressives issued a scathing rebuke to their Democratic colleagues in the Senate who voted for a funding bill with no guarantee to protect the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans.
With the backing of leadership, the continued resolution was advanced by a group of eight Senate Democrats this weekend to end what has been the longest shutdown in US history.
In a joint statement, the 94-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) announced its opposition to the stopgap funding bill, which it said "includes no provisions to guarantee affordable healthcare and protect tens of millions of Americans from massive price spikes to their premiums, and imposes no strong guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from violating appropriations laws."
The bill agrees to fund the government until the end of 2026, without a deal to extend ACA subsidies that, if allowed to expire at the end of the year, will result in more than 20 million Americans seeing their insurance premiums more than double, according to analysis by KFF. It also introduces no new provisions to prevent President Donald Trump from refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress, nor does it address the nearly $1 trillion worth of Medicaid cuts passed in July’s GOP spending bill.
"The Senate-passed bill is a betrayal of working people and massively fails to address the urgent needs of the American people,” said CPC Deputy Chair Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “Instead of working toward a fair deal, House Republicans refused to negotiate and abdicated their duty to serve the American people."
"The Senate-passed bill is morally bankrupt. It is indefensible to allow more than 20 million Americans to see their premiums double and let millions lose their healthcare coverage. Healthcare is a human right, and this bill contradicts that fundamental principle," Omar continued. "Make no mistake, people will die from these skyrocketing healthcare costs, paired with Republicans’ brutal Medicaid cuts."
After over a month of holding out, Democrats ultimately cracked under the White House's use of the shutdown to punish segments of the American public: Government workers hit with mass layoffs, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients illegally denied this month’s benefits, and residents of blue states and cities stripped of congressionally appropriated funding for critical infrastructure.
While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) voted no on the deal to break the Democratic filibuster, he is widely understood to be the driving force behind the agreement, supporting the clique of eight Democratic senators who voted with the GOP—none of whom face reelection in 2026—to take the fall.
In the aftermath of the cave, Schumer has faced calls from several House Democrats to step down from leadership, including Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Mike Levin (Calif.). However, none in the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have joined in that push, even though any one of them could force a vote on his leadership within seven days.
As part of the Senate deal, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) promised that Republicans would hold a vote to extend healthcare subsidies within 40 days. But CPC chairman Greg Casar dismissed it as "nothing but a pinky promise."
“A deal that doesn’t reduce healthcare costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them,” Casar said. “Millions of families would pay the price.”
The CPC has said it will vote no when the bill comes to the House for a vote on Wednesday, as have most other Democrats.
“I will not support any deal that doesn’t improve the lives of working Americans,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the co-chair of the CPC political action committee. “End of story.”
In the GOP-controlled chamber, Democrats cannot stop the bill on their own. But Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can only afford to lose two Republicans, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already signaled that he will vote no.
While others, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), have expressed concern and disgust toward her GOP colleagues over the bill's lack of a solution to the looming healthcare apocalypse, there's no indication that enough Republicans will defect to kill the resolution.
On Tuesday, Republicans in the House voted down a Democratic amendment that would have extended ACA subsidies for three years.
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Progressives Organize 'Shutdown Showdown' to Defend Healthcare From Trump and GOP
"Republicans could end this Trump Shutdown today by passing a deal that averts the massive spike in healthcare costs," said a co-director of Indivisible. "They need to feel heat from their constituents."
Oct 02, 2025
Progressive activist groups and legislators have launched a new effort to pressure Congress to reach a deal to end the government shutdown that protects healthcare programs from brutal budget cuts.
The government officially shut down on Wednesday after Republicans refused Democrats' demands to reverse cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) spending from July's GOP megabill that, if allowed to go into effect, are expected to result in around 15 million Americans losing their health insurance coverage over the next decade.
On the first evening of the shutdown, over 18,000 people joined a conference call organized by a coalition of advocacy groups, including Public Citizen, MoveOn, Working Families Power, and Indivisible. Also in attendance were Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and vice chair Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).
"We know that we are already in a broken healthcare system in this nation," Frost told the thousands of attendees. "Not only do they not want to do anything to fix the problems we have, they are making it worse."
Video: MoveOn
"We want to reopen this shutdown government and restore healthcare back to the American people," Casar said. "But House Republicans are nowhere to be found. I'm here in Washington, DC, and those House Republicans fled on vacation."
The hosts urged attendees to call their Republican senators and make them aware of their responsibility for the shutdown and the loss of healthcare that millions of their constituents may soon face.
They also singled out certain Senate Democrats, such as Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (Nev.), who voted to advance the GOP's continuing resolution despite the lack of benefits on healthcare, for "siding with [President] Donald Trump."
"We can do this," said movement organizer Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson. "We can put the pressure on that forces the Democratic Party to have a backbone and the Republicans to prioritize people over profit."
The groups have dozens of events planned over the coming days as part of what they have called the "Shutdown Showdown" campaign, including rallies and demonstrations outside the offices of Republican lawmakers.
“Trump and congressional Republicans control a federal government trifecta; they are responsible for ending the shutdown," said Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible. "We don’t know how long this shutdown is going to last."
He said Republicans "need to feel heat from their constituents to actually sit down and negotiate with the Democrats. That’s where we come in.”
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Largest Caucus in House Endorses Bill to Block US Bombs to Israel
"The United States cannot continue to send bombs we know will be used to commit terrible atrocities in Gaza."
Sep 21, 2025
The Congressional Progressive Caucus over the weekend officially endorsed a bill that would block the sale of many offensive US weapons to Israel. This move coincides with growing outrage from US voters from across the political spectrum who say they have seen enough of American complicity with the genocidal humanitarian blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
"The United States cannot continue to send bombs we know will be used to commit terrible atrocities in Gaza,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the CPC, the largest single caucus in Congress, with nearly one hundred members.
The Block the Bombs Act, first introduced in May by Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) and now backed by 49 co-sponsors, calls for a prohibition on the sale of a variety of US weapons and a limitation on military services to the Israeli government, accused of committing a genocide in Gaza.
The vote by the caucus, which took place Saturday and was first reported by Zeteo, marks a historic shift—even for the most progressive group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill—that provides "a significant boost to efforts to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal war in Gaza."
While the CPC acknowledged that the legislation, H.R. 3565, "targets the most destructive and indiscriminate weapons systems, such as BLU-109 bunker buster bombs, 2,000-pound bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), 120mm tank rounds, and 155mm artillery shells," it does not put restrictions on what it terms "defensive systems," such the Iron Dome missile shield.
"Netanyahu and Trump are a lethal, unaccountable, extremist duo," said Ramirez in a statement on Sunday. “The Block the Bombs bill is the first step toward oversight and accountability for the murder of children with U.S.-made, taxpayer-funded weapons. In the face of authoritarian leaders perpetrating a genocidal campaign, Block the Bombs is the minimum action Congress must take. I am proud to be part of a caucus of progressive leaders who are challenging policies that destroy life, rob our children of futures, or dehumanize our neighbors."
Last week, despite a finding just earlier by the UN Commission of Inquiry that Israel is, in fact, perpetrating genocide in Gaza, the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, now undergoing a famine in which hundreds of people—young people and old—have died of starvation and otherwise preventable disease.
In a Saturday op-ed on Common Dreams, Peace Action president Kevin Martin said it's way beyond time for the US to end its arming of Israel, and he heralded Ramirez's bill, though not perfect, as the best vehicle in the moment for doing that.
"The bill is as close as we have to a de facto arms embargo on Israel," argued Martin, "as it would ban transfers of seven specific offensive weapons systems, from bunker-busting bombs to tank ammunition to white phosphorus artillery munitions.
"The Biden Administration’s support for Israel was bad, but predictably, Trump has been worse, accelerating transfers of bombs and guns with monolithic Republican," argued Martin, "and far too much Democratic, support, in spite of Israel’s clear violations of U.S. and international law in its mass killing of civilians and denial of life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza."
DropSite News co-founder Ryan Grim emphasized the historic nature of the vote in a social media post following Saturday's news.
“Historically, the CPC had resisted weighing in at all on Israel because so many of its members were ‘progressive except for Palestine,'" said Grim.
"That era is fading," he added, "this endorsement is a major signal."
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