This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
We are in a government shutdown. Democrats and Republicans have not been able to come to agreement — are nowhere near, as I say this, coming to an agreement — about how to fund the government. The nature of this shutdown, people had lots of ideas about what, if it happened, it should be about. Should Democrats demand concessions on tariffs? Should it be about authoritarianism? What it is about, in the reality we’re living in, is health care. The Affordable Care Act for the last few years has been supported by tax credits that have made the premiums much lower and have expanded coverage under it enormously. Those credits expire at the end of this year. If nothing is done to keep them from expiring, there will be a huge premium shock, and millions of people will lose health insurance.
I wanted to have an episode diving into the actual policy debates and stakes of this shutdown, the spending fights that led to it, the unusual ways in which Republicans have been breaking Democratic trust that helped set the stage for it, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid debates that are now at the center of it and the way the Trump administration is trying to bring very particular forms of pressure to bear on the Democrats, trying to break them and make them capitulate. But they’re doing so in ways that might actually be uniting them.
The person I wanted to talk about all this with is Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, one of the largest progressive think tanks. She worked in the Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations. Under Obama, she was central in helping to craft and pass the Affordable Care Act. Under Biden, she was a director of the Domestic Policy Council. So she knows all the policy here, inside and out.
Ezra Klein: Neera Tanden, welcome to the show.
Neera Tanden: Thank you so much for having me.
If you’re out there following coverage of the shutdown, you’re hearing a lot about something called a C.R. What is a C.R.?
“C.R.” stands for “continuing resolution,” and it is basically legislation that says that the funding levels of the government will just continue as they are for a specified period.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post What the Shutdown Is Really About appeared first on New York Times.
