S4 E32 - The Shutdown They Wanted: Democrats Hold the Budget Hostage

The United States government has shut down — but not for the reasons you’re being told.
 This wasn’t a failure to “agree on a budget.” It was a deliberate strategy by Democrats to block the budget over one issue: taxpayer-funded health subsidies for millions who pay nothing into the system.

In this episode of The Tenth Man, we break down:

• Why the shutdown is entirely manufactured
• How Democrats are using health subsidies as a political weapon
• The myths about federal workers and who’s really affected
• Why less government may actually be better government
• And yes… why the Grand Canyon doesn’t need a bureaucrat to stay open

Forget the spin. This is the story the media won’t tell you.

🎧 Podcast listeners — catch the full-length episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

👇 Timestamps:
00:00 Cold Open
00:35 The Real Story Behind the Shutdown
02:00 The Subsidy Gambit
03:40 The Freeloader Class
05:10 The Filibuster Twist
06:20 Who’s Really “Hurt”?
07:40 Grand Canyon & Myths
08:30 The Bigger Picture & Outro

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Transcript

0:00

The United States government has shut down, not because Washington couldn't agree, because Democrats refused to negotiate on a single narrow self-serving point. They're holding the entire federal government hostage to protect the freeloader class. They say the Grand Canyon will be closed. Really? You need the federal government to keep a hole in the ground open. They're counting down the days of shutdown. But no one has missed a payday. Not yet. This isn't about keeping the government open, it's about keeping the gravy train running The, the United States government has shut down and the media want you to panic. They want you to picture padlocked national Parks. Starving federal workers, chaos at the airports and grandmothers weeping over social security checks that never arrive. But here's the truth, they don't want you to hear. This shutdown didn't happen because Washington couldn't agree. It happened because Democrats refused to negotiate on a single narrow self-serving point, one point, and they're holding the entire federal government hostage to get their way. This is the 10th Man, and today we're unpacking the real reason for the 2025 government shutdown. It's not about fiscal gridlock, it's about the Democrat party's sacred cow, the freeloader class. The headlines say Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a budget. Sounds like both sides are to blame. A classic both sides narrative, but that's not what happened. House Republicans passed a short-term funding bill, a clean continuing resolution. It went to the Senate where Democrats filibuster it. Why? Because it didn't include a permanent extension of temporary COVID era health insurance subsidies and restore Medicaid scammers to the public roles. That's right. A single issue. Health subsidies for people who aren't paying. This is the Hill Democrats chose to die. They've decided that if they can't get permanent taxpayer funded health benefits for the freeloader class, then no one gets a functioning government and everything that it provides. That's not negotiation. That's hostage taking. Let's break down exactly what they're fighting for. During COVID, Congress temporarily juiced up Obamacare subsidies to make premiums lower. Because somehow Obamacare didn't do all that it was supposed to. In some cases, the premiums were effectively free for millions of people. These were explicitly temporary emergency measures. Everyone knew they'd expire. Fast forward to now, the subsidies are set to expire on schedule. No one is cutting them. They're just ending like they were always supposed to two. But Democrats treat every temporary spending increase as permanent and they call any expiration a cut. They've mastered Orwellian language. Meanwhile, the real reason health premiums are high isn't that subsidies are too low. It's the insured are forced to pay for the uninsured. Hospitals, charge two rates. One for people without insurance and a second higher one for those with insurance to cover those who don't pay, and the insurers pass those costs on to you. Instead of fixing that system by requiring people to actually pay their own way. Democrats want to double down on subsidies. They wanna take your tax dollars and funnel them indirectly to people who made the personal choice not to buy insurance. This isn't compassion. It's rewarding freeloaders and forcing working Americans to pick up the tab. If you're enjoying this breakdown and you're tired of the media's echo chamber, follow the 10th man on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're watching on YouTube later, tap, subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the shorter video versions coming up. Now, America is the only country on earth where millions of people get truly free healthcare, truly free without paying the taxes that funded. In Europe, many countries have so-called free healthcare, but they also have crushing taxes. Everyone pays in. In America, about half the population pays no income tax. Medicaid, which provides free medical care to tens of millions, is funded by those income taxes. So think about that. One third of Americans are on Medicaid. Most of them also pay no income tax. No other country in the world has a freeloader class this large, and the Democrats know it and they just wanna make it larger. They cultivate it, they depend on it because these are the voters who, people like Kamala and A OC and Chuck Schumer need to get in power. People who get something for nothing. And reliably vote for the party that keeps the gravy train rolling. And don't forget the other freeloaders, illegal immigrants. Many states give them free healthcare too. Money is fungible. So yes, you pay for that. The Democrats entire strategy depends on keeping the freeloader class happy. That's why they're willing to shut down the entire federal government to protect these subsidies. Now if Republicans control the House and Senate, why don't they just pass the budget anyway? One word, the filibuster. The Senate requires 60 votes to overcome it, and even with the Republican majority, you still need some Democrats, and maybe you remember a few years ago. Back then Democrats called the filibuster racist, anti-democratic, a relic of Jim Crow, and they could have eliminated it when they held power, Republicans dared them to do so, warning them that they'd be sorry if they did. Well, they didn't, and now they're using it to block the budget. They kept it because they thought it would benefit them later and well. It's later and they're not sorry. So what happens during a shutdown? First, let's dispel the hysteria. Because taxes are still collected, the military still operates. Social security checks still go out. What does stop is discretionary spending, non-essential programs. And if they're non-essential, we should all ask why they exist in the first place. So about 750,000 federal employees are being furloughed, but their income is guaranteed by law. After 2018, Congress passed a law guaranteeing back pay for not working, and many can collect unemployment too. In the meantime if they actually don't get paid. We'll talk about that. So while the media show tearful federal workers at food banks, remember this is basically a paid vacation for anyone who's budgeted wisely. Now, compare that to the Democrat COVID shutdowns when millions of private sector workers lost their jobs permanently, no guaranteed back pay, no safety net like this one. The federal workforce has one of the cushiest safety nets in the country, and while they're counting the days of the shutdown, currently we're in day three. The countdown that's actually missing is the only one that matters, and that's the payday countdown because no one has missed a payday yet. Everyone has been paid to date. Government employees work by the month or by the two weeks, and they get paid at the end of a pay period, just like all of us. So the earliest date that a payday may be missed is October the 10th, but no one is saying that No one will have been working without pay until a payday passes for them, which whatever their payday might be. So the workers who have been sent home, they are on kind of a paid vacation for now, even if they didn't budget wisely. And that's why the scare stories Ring hollow. Every shutdown brings the same tired examples. The Grand Canyon will be closed. Really? You need the federal government to keep a hole in the ground open. The Grand Canyon was there for millions of years before the Park Service, and it doesn't disappear when the government closes. It actually takes government action to close the Grand Canyon, not to open it. And the same goes for all of our parks, most of our monuments and tourist sites. The absence of federal micromanagement is often a relief without even getting into regulations and so forth. So here's what Democrats are actually worried about. Many of these furloughs of government workers may become permanent. The Trump administration has already cut millions of ineligible people from Medicare roles. And shutdowns reveal how many jobs are not essential. And these federal employees, they comprise a core Democrat constituency, often unionized and reliably blue. A prolonged shutdown will hurt them and hurts Democrats politically. And even if the media pin blame on Republicans, the people directly affected know what's really going on. They're being sacrificed, so the freeloader class can keep its subsidies. So why should the rest of US care? Frankly, less government is better government. The taxes are still rolling in. The spending spigot has temporarily been turned off. Washington is being forced for once to live within its means. We should be asking why this doesn't happen more often. Instead of funding every bloated program, foreign aid scheme and illegal immigration boondoggle, maybe Congress should look at priorities. That is its job, after all. We're sending billions overseas to places like Ukraine while Americans face inflation at home. And we're paying to house, feed and track millions of illegal aliens. Okay. Meanwhile, Democrats are shutting down the entire federal government just to keep subsidies flowing to the freeloaders. Make no mistake, this shutdown is not a failure of negotiation. It's a deliberate tactic by Democrats to protect their most loyal constituency, the people who don't pay but always receive. It isn't about keeping the government open, it's about keeping the freeloader class satisfied. And if that means holding the rest of the country hostage, so be it because that's how they operate. If you enjoyed this episode, follow the 10th man on Spotify Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and please share this episode with a friend because dissent isn't disloyalty, it's your duty.