Sen. Adam Schiff was exactly right that the cruelty is the point with these people. The "let them eat cake" crowd could care less about the damage they're inflicting while they stay on vacation, hold lavish parties and go golfing.
Schiff was asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos whether the Democrats were going to give in on the shutdown or not and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent's statement that "it's just up to Democratic senators to turn around."
Schiff pushed back hard on the notion that they should cave to this administration before blasting them for their indifference to the people they're harming.
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): No. I certainly hope it isn't going to happen, if millions of people are going to retain their health coverage and not have to pay these exorbitant premium increases. George, I'm hearing from people all over California, people with pre-existing conditions, people who tell me their premiums are going to go up $1,000 a month, that they're going to have to drop their coverage. They know that's really bad for them and their families.
And we can easily estimate the millions of people that are going to lose access to quality care, and the tens of thousands of lives that will be lost. So we need to end this, we propose something I think very reasonable. It was a compromise, certainly wasn't everything I want, which is a permanent extension of the tax credits. We said, let's extend existing law for a year, give us more time to work on this, and re-open the government.
And the result from the Republicans was -- from the Senate Republicans, no, from the House Republicans, we're staying on vacation. And for the president, I'm going out to play golf. And that's where we are, while people are hurting. And one thing that is just so shocking to me, George, in the midst of all of this, they're appealing to the Supreme Court for the right to cut off food from people.
Who does that? Who works so hard? Who goes all the way through the court system to cut food from people who need it right now? But that's where they're coming from. The cruelty is part of the policy.
When their voters are ever going to wake up to that fact is beyond me.
