Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says Democrats are deliberately prolonging the government shutdown to distract from the unraveling of Obamacare, which he describes as a failed system propped up by temporary subsidies and media spin. Speaking on Breitbart News Daily, Johnson argued that the true motive behind the Democrat-led standoff is to “mask the failure of Obamacare.”
“I’ll never understand the mind of a Democrat, and they do some pretty wacky things,” Johnson said. But in this case, he believes their actions are strategic. “What they are primarily interested in doing is covering up, masking the failure of Obamacare.”
Johnson explained that the current fight over extending enhanced subsidies is not about helping working families, but about shielding the public from the realities of a broken system. “They allowed premiums to skyrocket on the individual market because of the faulty design,” he said. The subsidies were introduced during COVID as a temporary measure, but Democrats are now pushing to make them permanent in order to keep Obamacare from collapsing under its own weight.
“They realized if those subsidies expired, people are going to really understand what a massive failure Obamacare is,” Johnson said. “So they’ve concocted this shutdown narrative to try and blame Republicans for the consequences of their own policies.”
He pointed out how legacy media outlets are helping the Democrats spin the story. “Unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of the lame stream media playing along with them, but I think that’s wearing a little thin.”
Johnson also highlighted the damage Obamacare has done to the individual insurance market. Before the Affordable Care Act, about 12 million Americans had access to flexible short-term plans that met their needs. Obamacare eliminated those options, scrapped high-risk pools, and forced those individuals into rigid, one-size-fits-all government plans—driving up premiums in the process.
“They forced that 12 million Americans to pick up the full cost of covering pre-existing conditions rather than using high-risk pools to spread the cost across everyone,” Johnson explained.
Calling it the “Unaffordable Care Act,” Johnson said Democrats want to paper over its failures by throwing more taxpayer money at it. “They don’t want people to know what a failure this law really was. They just want to mask it.”
He urged Republicans to stand firm. “Republicans had better not go along with that. I’m surely not going to. We need all of our Republican colleagues to dig our heels in, put up with the lies, and stay strong.”
Johnson concluded by emphasizing that the solution lies in free-market reforms, not more government spending.
