Politics and views in the United States.

House Democrats are reassuring their constituents about the reasons for the shutdown. Federal workers are concerned about being in the middle of the partisan fight and what happens now that the Farm Bill has expired?

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

Whether or not Republicans want to acknowledge it and whether they want to lie about it by saying it's only going to be for undocumented immigrants, the reality is next January you'll be paying that much if they do not act now.

Virginia Democratic Representative Suhas Subramaniam says they're blocking government funding to defend people's access to health care.

He says they want to restore hundreds of billions of cuts from Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies in the GOP mega bill which provided tax breaks for the wealthy.

Republicans argue Democrats want to give health care to illegal immigrants, but those migrants are in fact ineligible for the programs.

One poll found more than four out of every five Americans across parties support the Affordable Care Act subsidies, making insurance less expensive.

Another found voters blame Republicans more for the shutdown by a narrow margin.

It's unlikely the Senate will vote soon on any compromise proposals and the House will be out of session this week.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he wants to pressure Senate Democrats who he says are blocking funding to appease their base and because Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is afraid of his voters.

Chuck Schumer is a far left progressive politician, but he's not far enough left for this base.

And so he's got to show a fight against the president.

He's got to show that he's fighting Republicans.

States like New York estimate the impacts of ending the ACA subsidies will be drastic when combined with the Medicaid cuts.

Nathan Gusdorf is with the Fiscal Policy Institute.

The Department of Health has estimated that failing to extend these tax credits will cause health care costs in New York to rise by 38 percent for the 140,000 individual market enrollees.

And it will cut funding to the Essential Plan, which provides health care to 1.7 million New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, thousands of vital federal employees are working without pay or co-top with the American Federation of Government Employees says administration cuts and layoffs are hitting already underfunded agencies which were never bloated in the first place.

The VA has been chronically understaffed and underfunded for years.

And so when we do have complaints about the VA and its wait times, I would say, well, fund it and staff it more than 75 percent and see how great it is.

Legal experts say administration rhetoric about the shutdown may actually break the law that prohibits using public office for political ends.

The Hatch Act prevents officials from using their authority to politicize the federal workplace and ensures nonpartisan administration of government programs.

But Delaney Marsco with Campaign Legal Center says government websites are now displaying messages blaming the Democrats for the shutdown.

Specifically mentioning a political party, kind of targeting a political party, does come a little bit closer to that definition of what political activity is.

She notes the lower level employees often face disciplinary action for Hatch Act violations, but senior officials rarely do, creating an accountability gap.

The long-delayed farm bill is still up in the air.

It hasn't been updated in seven years and expired while lawmakers were busy grappling with the budget.

Michael Happ with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says Congress needs to understand farmers are in a much different situation than they were in 2018.

Input costs are through the roof.

Corn prices in particular are way down.

And then we have the uncertainty from the tariffs.

The Trump administration says it's looking at bailing out soybean and row crop farmers hit hard by the trade battles with China due to the shutdown.

Farming programs focused on conservation, research and clean energy can't function, which Happ says is leading to confusion, frustration and an erosion of trust.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.