Conservative political commentator Scott Jennings confronted Democratic activist David Hogg during a CNN NewsNight panel, rejecting Hogg’s claim that Republicans are solely responsible for the ongoing government shutdown. The exchange reflected growing tensions over budget negotiations tied to expiring healthcare subsidies and broader entitlement spending.
Hogg argued that Republicans were obstructing government funding to avoid being “complicit” in allowing Americans to rely on Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, especially as premium costs are expected to rise. He suggested that Republicans were using the shutdown to distance themselves from a politically unpopular outcome tied to ACA funding. Jennings quickly pushed back, stating that the ACA, including the premium subsidies and their 2025 expiration, were entirely Democratic initiatives.
Jennings emphasized that Democrats had originally inserted the expiration clause into the subsidy legislation and are now leveraging the shutdown to force its extension. He criticized Democrats for tying unrelated policy demands—such as ACA funding, SNAP benefits, and other welfare programs—to basic government funding, effectively holding federal workers and services hostage to gain political concessions.
“The government could be reopened today,” Jennings said, asserting that policy debates like healthcare should be handled independently and not embedded in emergency funding bills. He argued that using the shutdown as leverage was a deliberate political strategy designed to shift blame while avoiding legislative accountability.
The back-and-forth underscores the deep divisions in Congress over spending priorities and legislative tactics, as both parties brace for public reaction to the prolonged funding impasse and its wider political consequences.
