Ben Shapiro

They never should have come to this.

It was a failure.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, she said, I've consistently voted against shutting down the government because I know the pain it's causing working families from TSA agents to government contractors.

We must extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, but that can't come at the expense of millions of Americans across our country impacted by the shutdown.

She said, with the government open, we can focus on passing a full bipartisan budget for 2026.

Similar sentiments from Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada, who narrowly, like very narrowly, retained her seat, as you recall, over Sam Brown in Nevada.

Very, very tight race there.

She barely kept her seat.

The concession we've been able to extract to get closer to extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits is a vote on a bill drafted and negotiated by Senate Democrats.

Let me be clear, I will keep fighting like hell to ensure we force Republicans to get this done.

But here's the thing.

This was a misbegotten strategy from the very beginning.

The only thing it got them was a political win because, again, it got Democrats out to the ballot box.

That's all.

They got a bunch of Democrats out to them.

And I guess that is a political win.

I mean, right.

They did better than they might otherwise have been expected to be in, say, the Virginia House of Delegates.

But they were willing to take the American people hostage, politically speaking, in order to get what they wanted here.

And this is the first government shutdown that I can remember, that I can recall, in which the government was shut down, not in order to exact concessions to lower spending, but in order to exact concessions to increase spending.