Karl Marx famously wrote in his 1848 Communist Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” and it was these unchained proletarians who elected Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City, along with other socialists in municipal elections from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon and cities in between. But the 2025 elections did more than sweep a surprising number of socialist politicians to power. They also revealed contradictions inherent to all leftist ideologies.  One big contradiction involves affordability, a major issue in the 2025 elections, particularly in terms of housing. But proletarians voting for socialists in the hopes of achieving the dream of homeownership don’t realize they’re voting for the kind of big government that’s already putting it out of reach.  A report by Murray Weidenbaum at Washington University in St. Louis found that in three surveyed locales—Colorado, St. Louis, and New Jersey—the cost of government regulations added $1,500 to $2,500 to the price of an average house in the mid-1970s. By 2011, government mandates increased home prices by $65,224. Over the next decade, government made homes $93,870 more expensive. Socialists decry the high price of housing, but intrusive government contradicts them by burdening homebuyers with escalating regulatory costs, and socialists are not prone to surrendering government control of people’s lives. In New York City, affordability provides an additional contradiction. When someone complains about life being too expensive, they might consider economizing or relocating to a less expensive place. But Mamdani voters do not want to economize or move; they want to continue drinking $8 lattes and living in Greenwich Village. Their belief system demands the world adapt to them rather than adapting to the world around them. It is a belief that inverts Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is foundational to the belief system of true proletarians.  Then there’s the contradiction of what constitutes a proletarian in the first place. According to Britannica, Marx characterized proletarians as “workers who were engaged in industrial production and whose chief source of income was derived from the sale of their labor power.” This definition fits every working American; if you have a job, Marx says you’re a proletarian.  This definition might apply to someone like Elon Musk, who also sells his labor to make money. But some of Musk’s labor is used to build and operate factories which employ other proletarians. What we’re left with is an ideology in which proletarians who work only for themselves are the selfless good guys, but those who work for themselves while providing employment for others are selfish members of the bourgeoisie, the enemy of proletarians. It defies logic.  Marx did not envision a knowledge economy, computerized electric vehicles, or much else that constitutes the exponentially improved life we live today, so it’s not unreasonable to think that after 175 years, Marxism might be discarded simply for being woefully out of date. But one enduring aspect of Marxism is victimhood, which attends all leftist ideologies.  Twenty-five hundred years ago, proletarians lived lives that were genuinely nasty, brutish and short. The Latin word proletarius described the lowest class of society in ancient Rome: people who were ignorant, impoverished, and considered by the state as good for nothing more than breeding the next generation of Roman legionaries. A few thousand years later, life was marginally better for the proletarians of Marx’s day. They worked in dangerous conditions for wages so low they guaranteed perpetual poverty. Contrast this with today’s American proletarians who, deceived into believing they are victims, are among the most educated, most affluent, most pro-abortion people on Earth. Proletarians never had it so good, and it’s a contradiction of both history and ideology. Marx didn’t contemplate a working class comprised of well-fed women with graduate degrees in gender studies.  In a very literal way, the attempted implementation of socialism in America reflects the oft-repeated definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Socialism has a perfect record of failure wherever and whenever it’s been tried, prompting some theorists to claim social conditions just haven’t been right in the past, but they are now, so it’ll work this time. In truth, the only way socialism works is by force. That’s why East Germany had to build a wall to keep people from escaping it. Perhaps contradiction is too kind a word. The socialism peddled today is predicated on a system of organized lying and demands leaders who are skilled at telling convincing lies. Mamdani, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are just a few of those possessing the confidence, expressiveness, physical attractiveness and other traits required of a good liar. They personify the deceit necessary to camouflage the contradictions of their deeply flawed ideology. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post America’s New Proletarians appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The self-appointed enforcers of “progressive” media indoctrination are satisfied that CBS hasn’t yet changed the tone of “60 Minutes,” which they call a “crown jewel” of the Dan Rather Network. Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute was pleased that Sunday’s show still featured two “fair and factual” stories that criticized President Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the 13-minute puff piece by Jon Wertheim on radical feminist author Margaret Atwood, who the Left reveres for warning of right-wing Christian authoritarianism around the corner. The “60 Minutes” X account gushed: “Margaret Atwood, author of 64 books including ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,‘ has seen her work banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, and anti-Christian.” A “ban” in this case is normally in public school systems, not in wider society. You can find Atwood’s craptastic books easily, and hand them to your kids. A “ban” is not always a ban, either. The American Library Association admits most book challenges fail to remove books from classroom or library shelves completely. But any book that is challenged is considered a “banned” book. This terminology allows the Left to celebrate the “brave” authors, as CBS did with its segment title: “The Indomitable Margaret Atwood.” As in, “She’s impossible to defeat.” Wertheim began his interview segment with a flourish: “You’re an 85-year-old titan of literature, have been for a half-century now. You’re Canada’s best-known author, 64 books and counting. And increasingly, you find your work on lists of banned books, scrubbed from 135 American school districts.” This statistic on schools came from PEN America, a leftist lobbying group fighting conservative “challenges” to books. Earlier this year, it gave Atwood its “Eleanor Roosevelt Bravery in Literature Lifetime Achievement Award,” which CBS failed to mention. Here’s the first thing we know about CBS: No one will be brave enough to read out loud the passages in Atwood’s books that are too overtly sexual for 12-year-olds. Book “challengers” are always painted as silly and uptight. In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” there is forced intercourse, where a “commander” has sex with a “handmaid” in the presence of the “commander’s” wife, which is all about systematic misogyny. Atwood attacked school authorities in the Canadian province of Alberta as dunces: “The government put out an edict to all school boards saying that they couldn’t have any books in the library that had either direct or indirect sex. What is indirect sex? I don’t know.” I couldn’t find any document that said “indirect sex.” The government of Alberta did distinguish between “explicit” and “non-explicit” sexual references. This isn’t rocket science. Albertan officials singled out the graphic novel “Gender Queer,” which includes the transgender protagonist envisioning having her imaginary penis in mid-fellatio, as well as talk of masturbation and blow jobs. CBS was only interested in using the glamour of “book bans” to promote Atwood and, for the umpteenth time, find an authoritarian Christian conspiracy descending on America when abortion is no longer unlimited. Wertheim oozed: “With the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ began, for many readers, to feel eerily prescient.” Other than Atwood having a new memoir to sell, there was nothing here that hasn’t been said hundreds of times in leftist media. CBS and Wertheim certainly acted like eager handmaids to this literary “titan.” But all the audience gets is another recitation of how Trump’s America can be “eerily” smeared as an authoritarian nightmare if women can’t get a third-trimester abortion. If you consider that kind of television a “crown jewel,” then you like propaganda, and not journalism. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post ’60 Minutes’ Acts as Handmaid to a Feminist ‘Titan’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Time is short for the Trump administration. Last week’s elections were a setback, but not a devastating one: New Jersey is still a blue state, and while Virginia went red four years ago, it’s been trending Democratic for more than a decade. Republicans also fared poorly in Pennsylvania, however, an all-important presidential battleground. Democrats even made inroads deep into the South, taking two state senate seats in Mississippi—ending a GOP supermajority—and picking up city council spots in South Carolina and Florida. With results like these, the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in Congress won’t survive the midterm elections a year from now. And that means the Trump administration, which came roaring back to power in January, will face implacable legislative opposition in its final two years. Decisions the president makes now will determine not only the Republican Congress’ fate and how his own last years in office play out, but also whether the GOP goes into 2028 prepared to hold onto the White House. With the stakes the highest they will ever be, Trump has to focus on voters’ most basic measure of happiness: the state of the economy. Is 3% annual inflation satisfactory, or does that make Americans feel like former President Joe Biden never left? Beef prices are well above the inflation rate, and while home prices are rising more slowly than inflation, the elevated interest rates needed to keep inflation under control make taking on the debt to buy a house more burdensome. To address the latter, the administration has floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages, as if what Americans really want is to spend an extra two decades paying off a home with lower payments month by month. A half-century mortgage would turn homebuyers into something closer to renters, with their banks as their landlords—only maintenance and home repairs won’t be the landlord’s responsibility, they’ll be the mortgagor’s. That’s not the American dream. That’s 21st-century serfdom: laboring for a lifetime without owning property of your own free and clear. The president wants the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates even at the risk of sparking more inflation, in the hopes a growth boom fueled by easy credit will generate real prosperity that outstrips the rise in prices. He’s even promising to send Americans $2,000 stimulus checks as “dividends” from tariff revenue. That, too, would give an impetus to inflation. Yet the administration is making some wise moves, including opening parts of the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for resource development. With China aggressively using its rare earth metals as leverage in trade negotiations, the need for America to develop its own natural resources is urgent. Even the Barack Obama administration reaped the benefits of expanding domestic energy production during the fracking boom. Escalating electricity bills, which voters associate with the rush to build new AI data centers, are one source of Americans’ present discontents, and that’s all the more reason for the administration to prioritize energy and natural resources. Paring back regulation is one step in that direction—but extracting and refining rare-earth metals and other valuable commodities is a messy business. The answer is to make research and development of cleaner processing methods a priority alongside cutting red tape. Can the artificial intelligence industry that contributes to the problem of higher energy costs also bring about breakthroughs that provide a solution? That’s a question the administration should be asking Big Tech. America supplies the conditions that AI needs to flourish—and AI has to start reciprocating, providing the nation with new means to prosper, sooner rather than later. Trump’s tariffs have given American companies powerful incentives for developing industry at home—and they’ve given foreign nations reason to invest here to secure better trade terms with the administration. The next step is to build up advanced industrial capacity in the sectors we need most, starting with energy and environmental protection to be achieved through technology that aids development, rather than regulatory bureaucracy that holds it back. Not only will well-paid new jobs spring up quickly, as they did when fracking techniques first matured, but more energy will make possible more economic activity of all kinds, a virtuous cycle of growth and technological improvement. That approach promises to generate real-world returns that will not only overcome the ill effects of inflation but also lower prices for everything, as production methods become more efficient and are made cheaper by abundant energy. “Drill, baby, drill” were some of Trump’s favorite words on the campaign trail last year. But they also imply “learn, baby, learn” and “build, baby, build,” with science supporting energy, energy supporting industry, and industry turning science into applications. Financial finagling, whether in the form of 50-year mortgages or tariff stimulus checks, isn’t the answer—a rebirth of industry, enabled by American energy, is what the nation needs. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump Can Do Better Than Tariff ‘Dividends’ and 50-Year Mortgages appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss the troubling state of young American males, and how the education system has stripped young men of the desire and ability to be responsible adults. Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Victor Davis Hanson: [Virginia Attorney General-elect] Jay Jones said he wanted his opponent, who was the speaker of the Virginia Legislature, he wanted a bullet to kill him. And then they said, “You don’t really mean that.” And he said: Yes, I do. I’d like to see his kids dead and dead in the hands of his wife. That will not disqualify. Again, if he had tweeted, “I’ve been thinking about it. For me, for all of us in Virginia, we live next to Washington, we’re going have to find a way to work with [President Donald] Trump for the next [four years],” he would’ve lost that election if they exposed that. Jack Fowler: Yeah. Yeah. [Pennsylvania Sen.] John Fetterman has become a right-winger in the shifting dynamics here. Victor, we’re gonna take a little break and come back with a final topic, and that’s about the mental health of young men, and we will do that right after these final important messages. We are back with “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” We are recording on Sunday, Nov. 9, and this episode will be up on Thursday, Nov. 13, two weeks out from the great day of Thanksgiving. So, Victor, the day before Election Day, there was a conference on young American men that The Lafayette Company put on in D.C., and my dear friend Ellen Carmichael’s the person who put it on, and it was a very worthwhile undertaking. What’s going on with young men in America was the focus. So anyway, there was a poll done and I just think there’s some interesting findings in these polls of young American men. Few bullet points: On mental health, 57% of the respondents said their mental health is just fair, poor, or very poor. On friendships, 48% of Gen Z males have two or fewer friends. 11% have no friends at all. 36% of young men say they’re less socially engaged compared to prior to COVID and 41% say their mental health has worsened because of COVID. Just three more things. 40% of young men say they do not have a male mentor. Under guidance, 17% of respondents don’t look to anyone in their life for guidance about how to be a man in society. So, they figure things out on their own. And finally, on affiliation, 35% of males age 16 to 28 are not affiliated with any organized group, religious congregation, intramural sports team, online community, political volunteer association, or educational association. That’s a lot of loneliness and dysfunction out there, Victor. Hanson: Yeah, in the old days, they would’ve been in the Elks Club, the Lions Club, the Rotary Clubs, the Knights of Columbus, the Masonic Lodge, the Downtown Club, the bowling league, now they’re playing video games in their bedroom or garage or something. Part of it is technological, that you can connect with the world in a solitary fashion. And the more you do that, the fewer skills you have socially. So, these young men are doing video games in their own domiciles, and then they feel they’re awkward because they haven’t been out and met and greeted people. That’s one thing. The second thing that’s going on is, let’s face it, from K-12, they’re told by the education establishment in the form of teachers that are mostly female that they suffer from inordinate masculinity, toxic masculinity. Their sports are too rough. They should feminize, and the whole idea of being a male and being responsible is not inculcated. We have a high 45% divorce rate. So, in many cases, they either don’t have a father, or they have a stepfather or a boyfriend of their mother. That’s very problematic. When they get to college, they’re told that they are prone to be Harvey Weinsteins. And they’re gonna get two separate messages. They’re gonna see young women who, in today’s fashion, in the age of the Kardashians, are going to have short skirts, very provocatively dressed, and they’re going to have a Victorian code printed on that. So, when they go out for a date, they’re in the post-’60s age, where premarital intercourse and sexual congress is very common, very fine. But they’re gonna have a twist to it, unlike the ‘60s, that if that matchup or that agreement does not—I’m not saying there’s not forcible [asymmetrical relationships]. There are. But if any grounds whatsoever, the female partner objects post facto, if the male objects and says, “I had sexual congress with this woman, and I feel like she came onto me, and I was drunk,” nobody believes that, partly for good reasons, biology and all that, but the point I’m making, there is no due process if somebody accuses you of something, if you’re a male. And then, in graduate school, if you go on, about 55% of the degrees in the humanities, art history, English are from females. And superimposed on that is affirmative action. So, the male, especially the white male, goes to college—if he gets in—and I say, where I work, Stanford University, white males consist of about 34 to 36% of the population. But they took 9% who identified as white male at Stanford the last four years. So, when they go to that school, they’re going to be in a distinct minority, but they’re gonna be told that they are racist, homophobic, sexist, predators. Even though they’re underrepresented, they’re gonna be told, “White males take over the world. White, white, white, white, white.” I just reviewed a book by this Danielle Padilla, and the word “whiteness” I think was on 75 pages, always in a negative context. And then on top of that, I think I’m on reason No. 8, we have the whole sexual revolution of the feminist movement in the ‘60s that said women define their own sexuality on their own terms, and they can be as boorish and permissive and predatory as men. And that’s the definition of a proud, self-assured woman. What that means is the old idea that the male had certain responsibilities imposed on him by society and his family—to be a gentleman, to open the door for a woman, to pay for the dinner and on the first, second or third date, kiss her on the cheek or something, respect her privacy, and make sure that she was treated with respect and dignity—that’s out. If a male does that, he is a square. Then you have the reaction toward women who say, “Well, he didn’t pay for it,” or, “He is tight!” You broke the rules long ago, and he’s just now taking advantage of it. So, if you’re a male, in the old days, if you’re in your basement playing video games and you’re 29, a woman will say, “Well, get it together, bro. I mean, it’s time for you to move out of mom’s house and dad’s and I want you to get a job. I don’t care. Two jobs. I want you to tell me when you’re gonna buy a house, and then maybe we’ll see if we’re gonna date and have sexual relations.” Not now. The male says, “Well, you know, there’s nothing I have to do to date. I don’t even have to take her out to a movie. We just meet, we hook up that night, maybe. It’s all easy and nobody puts any demands on me to be a responsible date or father or partner, or husband.” I don’t wanna be too specific, but I think I have one, two, three, four, six nephews … Fowler: Yeah. Hanson: … in their late 30s and 40s. One is married, one owns a house. Fowler: Wow. Hanson: And that is a problem because they can’t … they all owe student loans. They are all working, but our society makes it very difficult. I’ve given the pathologies on the problems with young males, but there’s also the society at large. When I wrote “The Dying Citizen,” if you look at the ages when people get married, when they’ve had their first child, and when they buy their first home, it’s advanced by about four years. It’s got 23 to 27, 27 to 33, 33 to 40. So, we have this prolonged adolescence and that’s economic. The best thing that Trump could do is really get the interest rates back down to a mortgage of 4% or 5% and have a nationwide tax incentive program for people to build homes, and then to socially, culturally, inculcate a new, “It’s wonderful to get married in your early 20s. It’s wonderful to have children and family. And we’re going to really honor men who marry, buy homes, and are good providers.” And that would help. And then, “Video games are not really the way to spend your 20s and 30s.” Fowler: No. Hanson: I can honestly say I’ve never played a video game, so I shouldn’t talk about something I don’t know. Fowler: Oh, really? Hanson: Not once in my entire life. Fowler: Oh, Victor, let’s play Donkey Kong sometime or Mario Brothers. Hanson: I don’t even know the names of them. The reason I confess that is because I don’t want to talk about … I think they’re probably fascinating. I’ve seen them on the internet and stuff. But it’s something wrong with somebody 36 years old playing paintball with his buddies or …   Fowler: Yeah. Hanson: Yeah. I don’t know what— Fowler: Societal responsibilities take a generation or two generations to bleed out what colleges have done to the young. Hanson: That’s a lot of it. There’s no reason in the world that 50% of young people need to be in college, except if it was A, affordable, and B, educated you and gave you a general education of the world around you, your history, your culture, your ethos, art, music. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. It just gives you propaganda for the most part, unless you’re pure science. And then you’re going to pay all this money over the rate of inflation each year that tuition rises. You’re gonna be broke. And then you’re going to get embittered because your psychology or sociology degree from, I don’t know, UC Irvine, that you pinned $150,000 in the hole for. You’re gonna go out and be in an apartment, and the drain’s gonna get stopped up, and the plumber’s gonna come in and the guy is 23 and you’re 29. He doesn’t owe any money, and he is making 50 bucks an hour. Fowler: Right, right. “It’s unfair! It’s unfair!” Hanson: I’ve been reading the interviews with [Zohran] Mamdani’s voters. That’s what they say in New York. They’ve been replaced by AI or they couldn’t get a job because of AI, or they have too much student debt. And then the people they call to fix things make more money than they do. Fowler: And it’s, yeah, resentment. Real resentment. Hanson: And they’re frustrated. It’s kind of like Samson. They want to pull the house down on everybody. But not for good reasons, for bad. And he’s gonna help him do it. He’s a nihilist. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Sad, Conflicted State of Young American Men appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The longest government shutdown in history is almost over after the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening passed a continuing resolution to fund the government. The bill passed the lower chamber by a vote of 222 to 209. The measure would fund the entire government at least through Jan. 30, while three appropriations bills attached to the continuing resolution that will fund segments of the government for the rest of fiscal year 2026. All that’s left to end the government shutdown is President Donald Trump’s signature, which the White House said would be affixed to the bill Wednesday night. Republicans Declare Victory Despite Continued Frustration with Democrats In Washington, Republicans are rejoicing that the government shutdown will end without giving major concessions to Democrats. “For over six weeks, Democrats held our country hostage over demands for healthcare for illegal aliens and to prove to their base they could ‘stand up’ to President Trump,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas.  “The Republican Study Committee stood firm in rejecting any extension of COVID-era insurance subsidies that fuel fraud and drive up costs for American families, and in preventing Democrats from using the Christmas holidays to force a wasteful omnibus through Congress. Let me be clear: Democrats gained nothing from their shutdown while hardworking families paid the price. Now, it is time to get back to governing and delivering on the mandate we were given by the American people last November,” Pfluger continued. While Republicans have nearly ended the shutdown without major concessions, their frustration for Democrats shutting down the government is still palpable. “The Democrats [were] openly saying that they were leveraging the pain of the American people, all Americans, … to try to win a battle that they got nothing for, and they wasted all this time for us to get something done,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told reporters before Wednesday’s vote. “The Democrat Party has proven to put politics over people,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., told The Daily Signal. “The only thing the Democrat Party got [out] of this 40 plus day shutdown, [is] scaring the crap out of people, causing the most food security in the United States since the Great Depression,” Van Orden contended. Van Orden is concerned that Democrats could pull a similar stunt come January. “They changed the date on the CR so yes, I’m very concerned that the Democrat party was going to repeat history and do whatever the hell they possibly can to gain political power,” he added.  While concerns percolate over another shutdown come January, some House conservatives are relieved the bill will avert the possibility of Congress getting jammed with a Christmas-season omnibus package. “We’ve been advocating for a yearlong CR, but the thing that this CR to the end of January does is it relieves us of the old, historic, traditional Christmas omnibus [bill] that everybody loads up with a wish list,”Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas,  told The Daily Signal on Monday, referring to the congressional custom of hastily passing massive funding packages right before breaking for Christmas. “So this takes us past that, which is a very good deal.” The legislation to fund the government passed the Senate this past Monday, overcoming the opposition of 38 Senate Democrat Caucus members including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. They were joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who caucuses with the Democrats. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the only Senate Republican to not support the bill.  In addition to funding the entire government until Jan. 30, the legislation also provides funding for the full fiscal year to the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the FDA, the operations of Congress, and military construction projects.  The legislation will also bring the thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed back to work. These nonessential and essential federal workers have not received a paycheck since the shutdown began, but will receive backpay after the shutdown officially comes to an end. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a long-time opponent of continuing resolutions, voted against the bill. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., also voted against the bill, objecting to a Senate provision which allows Senators to sue the Department of Justice for not less than $500,000 in each instance their data is seized or subpoenaed without notice.“I could not in good conscience support a resolution that creates a self-indulgent legal provision for certain senators to enrich themselves by suing the Justice Department using taxpayer dollars,” Steube wrote on X. Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine; Henry Cuellar, D-Texas; Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., Adam Gray, D-Calif.; Danny Davis, D-Ill.; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., were the Democrats who broke party ranks to support the bill. Congress Looks to Find Healthcare Solutions Democrats withheld their support for funding the government, which entered a shutdown on Oct. 1, over expiring COVID-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Republicans sympathized with rising healthcare costs but objected to the Democrats’ tactics of holding government funding hostage to extend the subsidies. The Senate deal that broke the shutdown gridlock promised a group of Senate Democrat Caucus members a future vote on the subsidies. But, without reforms, the subsidies have little hope of passing as many Republicans argue that these subsidies are propping up an ineffective and unaffordable healthcare system. “I mean, here’s what Republicans want: actual affordable, reliable, high quality health care. Democrats want power, and if you can’t see that now, if you don’t report that, then you’re not doing the job,” Van Orden explained. “It’s turned out to be the UCA, the Unaffordable Care Act, because everything that was said … about driving up cost, lessening affordability, lessening access, all that’s come true,” Hern said. “We should look at how we’re going to lower costs without having to inject more federal dollars into it. The federal work ought to be able to lower the health care costs for all Americans,” the Oklahoma congressman added. “We got to come up with a good health care plan, which we’re working on now—freedom caucus is,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal. “We’ve got to come up with an overall health care system. Obamacare doesn’t work,” the South Carolina congressman added. When asked if there could be a bipartisan deal to extend the temporarily Covid-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., expressed concern that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., would not support such a measure. “I’m very concerned that even if the Senate came up with a deal that they could agree with that speaker Johnson won’t bring it to the floor, but we have the American people behind us, and we’re going to keep standing up,” Clark told the press. In the middle of the vote, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., reflected on Democrats’ position after the longest shutdown ever, telling The Daily Signal, “We certainly made healthcare the issue and cost of living the issue, but now we have to fight to really show people that we’re going to deliver.” Khanna has called for new Democrat leadership in the Senate after his party’s acquiescence. The post Government Shutdown Set to End With Trump’s Signature After House Passes Funding Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.