On Thursday, Senate Democrats voted for the 10th time to prolong the federal government shutdown. They also voted against funding the military, thereby necessitating that the Pentagon initiate some innovative accounting in order to ensure service members are paid on time. Democrats today are guided not by sober empiricism but by fanciful ideology. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) defended his caucus's latest vote, opining, "It's always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people in terms of health care, in terms of housing, in terms of safety." But to most Americans, such tendentious bloviating falls on deaf ears. Most commonsense Americans understand that there is no reason paying America's warriors should be held hostage to arcane debates over housing policy. As Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), one of three Senate Democrats who joined Republicans on Thursday in support of the defense appropriations bill, put it earlier this week: "You know, if you're thinking about winning the election, now, that's all going to come down to seven or eight states.... And a lot of the things, the extremism that people turned their back in '24, and that's how we kind of came up short." It's wise advice. But Fetterman is likely to pay for being such a rare voice of (relative) reason within the party with an impending bruising Senate primary contest. Why exactly are Democrats, who control neither chamber of Congress nor the presidency, continuing to insist on a protracted shutdown battle? It's a more complex question than it ought to be. But the basic disagreement amounts to one over expiring Obamacare subsidies and the scope of Medicaid coverage — pertaining, to no small extent, to illegal aliens. In short, then, air traffic control operations are suffering from a potentially dangerous shortage, America's beautiful national parks are understaffed, and service members could go with... No hoodwinking or hornswoggling here. Support independent journalism and get unlimited access to quality commentary. Subscribe Already a subscriber? Login here