Burningbird

Democrats: what exactly are you angry about?

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 11, 2025

Trump at Commanders game where he is booed

People are angry because 8 Democratic Senators voted with Republicans to pass a continuing resolution and re-open the government. The measure now goes to the House where, if Johnson remembers where he left the key to open the doors, it’s likely to pass.

Democrats are furious with the Democrats who joined with the Republicans. Oh, not the Republicans for not negotiating with us. Not with Johnson for keeping the House shut down.

No, all the anger is directed at Senate Democrats, because they did not keep up the fight.

I can understand. I was pretty disappointed myself. I really wanted to see us push back on the harm Trump has been doing to the country; to show he’s not the boss of all of us. And I wanted us to help the millions of people who are about to lose their no longer affordable healthcare.

We ended up shutting the government down for 40 days and seemingly have nothing to show for it. Wow, Senate Democrats…you suck.

Except there’s a part of me that knows we had only two choices at this point: We could continue the government shut down until Trump gets his way, and the Senate Republicans kill the filibuster; or we could vote for the CR, without the healthcare subsidies. There are no other options.

We knew these were the only options when Schumer made his offer of a deal last week: that Democrats would drop all other demands in exchange for getting the healthcare subsidies. This was a good deal for Republicans. After all, a whole lot of Republican voters are now facing higher insurance costs, and the subsidies have overwhelming support with both Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans could also claim that they got Democrats to drop all other demands and re-opened the government.

But they didn’t take the deal. They not only didn’t take the deal, their faux outrage and instant rejection told us there was no deal Democrats could offer that Republicans would take. They wanted complete capitulation and they were willing to keep the government shut down as long as it took to get the Democrats to give up. To them, the greater harm was bipartisanship.

People keep talking about how Congressional Democrats don’t seem to understand how things have changed with Trump, and they have to change what they do to fight him. But we, on the outside of Congress looking in, also need to understand that things have changed. There’s a new math in play.

You have, on one side of an equation, us. On the other side, you have a group of people who only care about one thing: holding power. They don’t care about anything else.

They don’t care that we can’t afford healthcare. They don’t care if hungry people get fed. They don’t care if planes fly on time. They certainly don’t care that the federal government continues to function.

Once upon a time, they may have cared about these things, or a minimum, cared about the optics of voters not getting fed, not having healthcare, being able to safely travel, and have a functioning government. But people voted for Trump and he promised none of this, and this sent a message to today’s Republicans: the only thing that matters is holding power and the way to hold power is by pleasing Trump, and the best way to please Trump is hurting Democrats.

How to hurt Democrats? Well, basically, you hurt the people of this country: the more vulnerable the people, the better.

Nothing else matters.

So, wise and wonderful pundits who have been nammering for two days about the awful Democratic senators, how exactly do you negotiate successfully with a people who see no harm coming from doing nothing? No, let me rephrase the question: How exactly can you fight people like this without also harming the people of this country?

When you have a President and party in control that don’t give a damn about anything else but themselves, everything that we thought we knew about responsible governance goes out the door.

House Democrats can easily fight Republicans just by not voting for anything the Republicans want to pass, because we can be fairly confident that whatever they want won’t be any good. House Democrats can always dance on the side of angels.

Senate Democrats, though, are hindered by this thing called a filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. It’s an outdated, outmoded idea that invariably harms the Democrats, and frankly, the people of this country, more than it constrains the Republicans. We should have dumped it when we had a chance, but didn’t.

But, we still have the filibuster. And because we do, Senate Democrats have basically two choices from now on: either a small subset throws themselves on the sword and votes to continue funding the government and keeping it functioning; or they all go for broke—do nothing for potentially several months, until Trump bullies Senate Republicans into dropping the filibuster to end the shutdown.

Either choice has consequences. Funding the government means people will lose healthcare. But not funding the government until the Republicans decide to blow up the filibuster means people still don’t have affordable healthcare, but we also have a badly broken government from being nonfunctioning for so long, and a severely harmed vulnerable population. And Senate Republicans can finally do the things they’ve wanted to do but couldn’t because of the filibuster:

Make it difficult to vote
Make life hell for the trans community
Kill or maim the Affordable Care Act
Starve SNAP, and diminish Medicaid even more
Attack vaccines, prohibit abortions nationally, and kill birth control
Cut taxes even more for the wealthy
Destroy most government functionality, particularly the components that regulate commerce and industries
Undermine academic freedom
Expand the military and federal police organizations
Push up the age in which a person can access Social Security and Medicare

Well, the list goes on. All you have to do is listen to the Trump administration folks and Congressional Republicans on Sunday talk shows to see the world they want to create. Or re-read the Project 2025 manifesto.

I used to think that Republicans had enough survival instincts to know that doing all of this will ultimately result in them losing power, but…people voted for Trump a second time. We no longer live in a rational universe.

As much as I think the filibuster harms Democratic goals, thank goodness we have it now.

Once the Republicans turned down the Schumer proposal, we knew there was nothing we could offer that the Republicans wanted. Their entire purpose now is to please Trump, because they see this as the way of holding onto power. And Trump has no problems inflicting maximum harm on the country to get his way, and his way is total domination of Democrats and complete subjugation of the country.

Other than being annoyed because nasty journalists keep asking him questions about it, Trump could care less that the country is shut down. It doesn’t stop him from building monuments to himself. It doesn’t stop his migrant pogrom. It certainly doesn’t stop him funding what he wants to fund, regardless of what Congress does.

It might be satisfying to keep the government shut down because it gives us the illusion we hold Congressional power, but we really don’t. Not unless we’re willing to sacrifice people who need food, who need to be paid, who are under threat of losing cars and homes, because of the shutdown.

The power we do have is our resistance, but never to the point of harming people who don’t deserve to be harmed. But, we can resist much in Congress without harming folks, and we should. We can resist much in the streets, and we will. We can resist when we vote, and we must.

Most importantly, we can remember exactly who it is we are resisting, and never let the pundits tell us otherwise.

When voters see their healthcare double at the end of the year, it won’t be because of a choice eight Democrats made, but because this is the choice 52 Republicans made. When people get their SNAP benefits, federal workers get their jobs back and get paid, and the country is functioning again, it won’t be because 52 Republicans voted, but because eight Democrats did.

Whatever

The PSC Election and Missing Chatham County Ballots

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date October 27, 2025

Not this year's absentee ballot

I like to vote absentee ballot when I can. Georgia has no-excuse absentee voting, which means you don’t have a doctor’s permission slip or special circumstances to vote absentee.

In past elections, absentee ballots kept us from having to stand in long lines, and also helped keep those lines from being even longer. During COVID, they helped keep us from getting sick.

Frankly, I don’t understand why all states don’t have a mail-in only election systems, since doing so increases voter participation and decreases election day kerfuffles. Unfortunately, though, there seems to be politicians who prefer that people not vote and do everything they can to make it more difficult. Such is life.

Normally, voting by absentee ballot in Georgia has been problem free for us. During COVID, we could even use dropoff boxes for our ballots, which made the process simpler and avoided USPS delays. But this year, both the Chatham county Board of Registrars and seemingly the USPS have let the folks in our county down.

The absentee ballot process was already compromised this year by Secretary of State Raffensperger’s decision that rather than submitting an absentee ballot request just once if you’re elderly or military, we had to submit requests for each election since this year’s election is a ‘special’ one. This caused confusion and likely led to some folks not getting an absentee ballot when they expected to get one.

In addition, the absentee ballot system we can access through the Georgia My Voter web site is supposed to reflect when absentee ballot requests are accepted. However, Chatham county registrar personnel did NOT update the database when the request was accepted. No, instead, they postdated the updates on the same day the absentee ballots were supposedly mailed: October 14th.

I had to email to see if our ballot requests were accepted. Another voter, Randy Ritchie, noted in a comment to the Board of Registrar’s Facebook page:

People, go sign in to your voter portal, look at the notifications. Look at the backdated entries of dates ballots received, then the entry that ballots went out Oct 14th. Yet when I called them on the 13th, they first said no record ballots were requested. Then they found my email of August 20th during that approximately one hour phone call.

And about that mailing date of October 14th…

By law, absentee ballots in this state could be mailed October 7th for this November’s election. The Secretary of State’s website did note that some counties could mail them later, but this begs the question: why?

Why wait an extra week? Especially when there have been changes, particularly in rural voting areas, in how the USPS does handle mail that could result in mail delays. The issues were known in plenty of time to update ballot forms. The turnout, including requests for absentee ballots, is light for this election.

So why wait an extra week?

That extra week could have come in handy in Chatham county when you consider a large block of absentee ballots has gone missing.

The weekend after the absentee ballots were supposedly mailed, I posted in the New Savannah Town Square Facebook page that I hadn’t received mine yet. I updated again, several times, the following week when each day brought another USPS Informed Delivery email with no ballot listed. Others commented on the posts that they or their adult children at school have not received their ballots.

We also contacted the voter registration office, and were assured that replacement ballots would be issued.

Finally, the news media picked up on the missing ballots the end of last week. In the news we heard that the vendor in North Carolina (North Carolina?) had printed out the ballots and dropped them off at the post office on the 15th.

From The Current, we found out that a block of 533 of these ballots supposedly mailed the 15th of October might be missing.

On Oct. 15, a batch of 533 absentee ballots processed by the vendor were transferred to a post office and logged into its system, according to Sabrina German, the office’s supervisor, as well as a statement issued by the registrar’s office on Friday.

Of the 999 applications for mail-in ballots accepted in Chatham County, only six had been returned by late Friday.

As of last Friday, only six ballots of 999 requested have been received,. Only six ballots eleven days before the election. Six ballots with an unknown number of missing ballots that Chatham County supposedly had reissued, thought the exact number of ballots actually missing is completely unknown. We currently don’t know if all missing ballots were reissued since they don’t know what happened to any of them.

The registration office then made a promise to the news organizations last week that those of us with missing ballots would receive them by today, Monday, the 27th.

Nope. Nada. Zip. Today’s USPS Informed delivery shows I’m getting a piece of junk mail, and that’s it.

Well, thank goodness the junk mail is getting through.

At this point in time, even if we receive the ballots tomorrow (and frankly, this is a big if), we can no longer trust that we can turn them around quickly enough for them to arrive by November 4th (the USPS recommends allowing at least five days to ensure your letter is delivered in time). Since the Georgia state legislature won’t allow ballots to be counted that arrive late even when properly dated by the post office, this could mean our votes won’t be counted.

And this is a big deal in more ways than one.

This special election is for two members of the Public Services Commission. Currently all members of the commission are Republican. In addition, all members have demonstrated a remarkably friendly relationship with Georgia Power, to the point of allowing Georgia Power to increase our electrical rates six times since 2023.

Six times, in two years.

This year, the positions of two incumbents, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, are up for re-election and they’ve been challenged by Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard, respectively.

The PSC election is a highly contentious one, with Republicans and Georgia Power wanting to keep the incumbents while people of all political parties wanting a change. It is particularly contentious for two reasons: Georgia Power wants to those keep friendly PSC members, and generally, rate payers, don’t; and the race is seen as a possible sign of how well the 2026 midterm elections will go, with Republicans and Democrats both wanting to use the election as a Sign of What Will Come.

At the same time, since this is an off-year election, turnout is low. When you have low turnout and a contentious election you have the recipe for legal challenges regardless of the result. For instance, if a race is close, let’s say within a few hundred votes, and several hundred ballots may have gone missing in Chatham county…well, you can see where this heading. And a simple recount won’t fix the problem: whoever loses in this race could challenge the entire election, and who knows where this could lead. Potentially, we could be looking at a redo of the election, or even an invalidation and possibly having to hold the election of these two positions over until next year.

That extra week the Chatham county Board of Registrars decided we didn’t need could have been used to fix this problem and still allow enough time for people to return their ballots. Now?

It’s a crap shoot.

More importantly, the election, itself, has been compromised. And in today’s political environment, any hint of a compromised election is enough to bring out the hordes. As it is, what’s happening in Chatham county is already being used to target no-excuse absentee voting for the entire state. As noted in The Current:

Election races decided by hundreds, even scores, of votes mean, among other things, that the missing absentee ballots could form the basis of a legal challenge to the vote. As of Friday, 6,645 out of Chatham County’s 231,196 registered voters — or 2.8% — had cast ballots in early in-person voting, according to the registrar’s office website.

More broadly, it adds momentum to calls for curbs in mail-in voting.

So what can we do?

If you haven’t received your absentee ballot yet, and you can vote in person, do so. Early voting is still happening until the 31st. Or you can vote on election day. You can also drop your ballot off at the voter registration office on Eisenhower, or at the dropbox locations at:

Voter Registration Office (1117 Eisenhower Dr, Suite E)
Mosquito Control Board (65 Billy B. Hair Drive)
Islands Library (50 Johnny Mercer Blvd.)

If you can’t vote in person or visit the dropbox locations directly, then get that ballot in the mail as fast as you can. Hopefully, we can still get the ballots processed in time. Knock on wood.

To ensure the ballots are properly handled by the mail, they can be dropped off at the post office. And you don’t have to do this yourself: you can have a friend or relative drop the ballots off for you. It’s against Georgia law for people to drop absentee ballots off at dropboxes for anyone not in their household, but not for them to drop the ballots off at the post office (showing how absolutely idiotic the dropbox law is).

Whatever you have to do, please do it.

As for the Chatham county voter registration, the office supervisor, Sabrina German, noted to the media last week:

“I am glad that we caught it in enough time that we were able to send out a second ballot and that the voters will still have the same chance to actually vote in this particular election.”

Well, Ms. German, the ballot is still, seemingly, in the mail. And no, you didn’t catch any of this in time. As Mr. Richie noted in his comment to the Board of Registrar’s Facebook post:

I’ve been given more than one excuse as to why we didn’t get our absentee ballots. I’ve spoken to the Board of assessors supervisor, then the manager. They have one job, failed. Two disabled seniors, and I’m too sick right now to try and go vote in early voting.

Political

No Kings: Inflatable costumes and Georgia anti-mask laws

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date October 16, 2025

Neither intimidating nor frightening

Portland showed us the way in how to fight against the lawlessness that now characterizes ICE and related federal activities: the Portland frog. More specifically, the wearing of inflatable costumes depicting a frog, unicorn, or other whimsical character.

Who can forget the image of Kristi Noem on top of the federal building, sternly looking down…at a man dressed as a chicken.

By wearing silly costumes, the protesters shattered the picture Republicans have attempted to draw: that the protests are violent acts of terrorism against the government. There is no more powerful an image of the recent protest than that of military garbed anti-riot police lined up against one man in a frog costume; no more chilling video than that showing police running out into the street and violently grabbing a man dressed as a giraffe and singing.

Now Republicans are attempting to paint the No King’s protests set for October 18th, as protests led by terrorists and violent Antifa with a capital ‘A’; that the protesters ‘hate’ America.

In the last No King’s protest, people carried the US flag to end the lie about protesters hating America. If anything, the people in the No King’s protests love this country more than the Republican leaders making negative claims, because this country came about as protest against a king and hence the name of the protests. These Republican leaders, on the other hand have all but ceded any and all authority to Trump: making him a king in all but name.

October 18th, the US flag will be carried again, but this time, in a nod to Portland, protesters will also be wearing costumes, including inflatable ones. I, myself, have encouraged protesters to do so in the Savannah protests.

However, yesterday we were reminded of Georgia’s Anti-mask law, and the fact that several states have anti-mask laws of one form or another. Georgia’s anti-mask law reads as follows:

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor when he or she:

Wears a mask, hood, or device by which any portion of his or her face is so hidden, concealed, or covered as to conceal his or her identity;

Is upon:

Any public way or public property; or

The private property of another without the written permission of the owner or occupier of such private property to do so; and

Intends to conceal his or her identity.

Without limiting the generality of subsection (a) of this Code section, no person shall be guilty of violating this Code section by:

Wearing a traditional holiday costume on the occasion of the holiday;

Lawfully engaging in trade and employment or in a sporting activity where a mask is worn for the purpose of ensuring the physical safety of the wearer or because of the nature of the occupation, trade, profession, or sporting activity;

Using a mask in a theatrical production including use in Mardi gras celebrations and masquerade balls;

Wearing a gas mask prescribed in emergency management drills and exercises or emergencies; or

Wearing a mask for the purpose of complying with the guidance of any health care agency or health care provider to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or other coronaviruses or influenza or other infectious diseases.

The anti-mask law was used to arrest someone in the first No Kings protest, and that person was wearing a mask for medical reasons—a legal use of masks. Another was also arrested for wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arabic scarf. What would happen if several people show up wearing inflatables? Will the SWAT team be called out?

It is possible that the Savannah police will decide that the inflatables don’t violate the anti-mask laws. But considering what happened in the last protest, there is a very good chance they will attempt to ticket or arrest costumed protesters. Before they do, though, a reminder to them and us that the intentions behind the mask wearing matter.

The protesters wearing inflatable and other costumes on Saturday are doing so to undermine the vicious and unwarranted claims being made by Republicans leaders and Trump. They are doing so as a matter of peaceful protest and therefore doing so is protected by the First Amendment.

Don’t take my word for it: take the word of the Georgia Supreme Court.

First, it’s important to know why Georgia and other states have a anti-mask law. They primarily came about because of the Klu Klux Klan, where the mask was seen as a threat, and an act of intimidation, as well as hiding the identity of people engaged in criminal acts of terror. As such, we can appreciate why it exists.

However, there are important limitations to enforcement of this law. They were spelled out by the Georgia Supreme court in the case of State v. Miller. In this case, a Klu Klux Klan member was arrested for wearing his mask, and then sued stating that Georgia’s anti-mask law was overbroad and unconstitutional.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that, in the case of Miller, his First Amendment rights were not violated, as he was free to wear the other components of the Klan regalia. They also noted why the anti-mask law was enacted.

The Court noted that, in 1951, when the statute was passed, there was a period of increased harassment, intimidation and violence against minorities that was perpetrated by Klansmen and other “hate organizations.” Further, during much of this violence and intimidation, the perpetrators wore masks, which prevented the victims from being able to identify the suspects. In fact, the sponsor of the anti-mask statue testified before the General Assembly, that the “mask-wearing had helped to create a climate of fear that prevented Georgia citizens from exercising their civil rights.

The court stated:

In conclusion, we hold that the Anti-Mask Act proscribes mask-wearing conduct that is intended to conceal the wearer’s identity and that the wearer knows, or reasonably should know, gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of intimidation, threats or impending violence. So construed, the Act passes constitutional muster.

And

[T]hese interests are in no way related to the suppression of constitutionally protected expression. The statute is content-neutral. It proscribes a certain form of menacing conduct without regard to the particular message of the mask-wearer. To the extent that the statute does proscribe the communicative aspect of mask-wearing conduct, its restriction is limited to threats and intimidation, which is not protected expression under the First Amendment.

To the extent that the statute does proscribe the communicative aspect of mask-wearing conduct, its restriction is limited to threats and intimidation, which is not protected expression under the First Amendment.

This is the most important component of the anti-masking laws: that wearing a mask is done so either to intimidate or threaten, or to conceal identity during a criminal act.

Ultimately, for police to enforce the anti-mask law the mask wearing must meet four criteria:

The person must be wearing:

(1) A mask, hood, or device to cover any portion of the face;

(2) Such that the person’s identity is concealed;

(3) The person is on a public way or private property without permission of owner or occupier of the property; and

(4) The person is concealing their identity under circumstances that the person knows or should know that mask, hood or cover, causes reasonable apprehension of intimidation, threats or impending violence.

It is legal under anti-mask laws of Georgia to wear a mask or inflatable costume during a protest if doing so is, itself, an expression of free and lawful speech and is not done so to conceal one’s identity in order to frighten or intimidate.

Since No Kings protesters are wearing costumes to counter the claims made by Republicans that the protesters are ‘violent’ and ‘hateful’ people, their masks are worn for the exact opposite reason as those not allowed under Georgia’s anti-mask laws: they’re worn to project peace and reassurance while still representing resistance. Though even being naked may be scary to some Republicans, the majority of people of good and common sense can differentiate between an intimidating mask, and a silly one.

The Savannah police ticketing or arresting any protester wearing a non-intimidating or non-threatening costume during peaceful protest is in violation of their Constitutional rights, as reinforced by Georgia’s own Supreme Court—something city leaders should be making plain to the police in all districts in the state.

So, wear that rainbow unicorn or frog or lion costume and be joyous as well as resolute in your protest that our country will not tolerate a king.

Legal, Laws, and Regs People Political

Don’t condemn the regular police in Chicago and Portland

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date October 6, 2025

Folks were upset when Illinois State Police showed up at an ICE protest in Chicago. Some questioned why Pritzker would do so. Were the state police now siding with ICE?

The answer to why the ISP showed up can be found in federal judge’s ruling about the federalization of Oregon National Guard in Portland. In her decision, in page after page, Judge Karin Immergut detailed what exactly is happening on the streets of Portland, and how any protest that crossed the line, no matter how minor, was met and handled by the local police, without any needed assist from any other party.

Judge Immergut wasn’t just stopping the seeming military takeover of our cities, she was also providing a guide in how cities and states can ensure that military incursions can be avoided: by having local and state police present at any ICE protest. Not only can the local police ensure that no laws are broken, their presence should also, hopefully, prevent some of egregious violence that federal police and ICE have been inflicting on law-abiding protestors.

In addition, local and state police can act as witness, providing a true recounting of events rather than that slop being fed to the press from DHS.

It’s also important for protests to stay peaceful and nonviolent. Even traditional nonviolent forms of civil disobedience, such as sitting in streets, should be avoided because there is nothing Trump, Noem, and their bully boys want more than to bash in liberal heads, and cry ‘assault’ when some protester’s face meets their fists.

These aren’t normal times. We cannot expect the federal government to act lawfully, or with anything resembling reasonable control. We have to assume in each and every incidence of protester meeting feds that the feds will unleash violence: pushing, shoving, shooting tear gas and non-lethal projectiles into any group of assembled people.

We want local and state police there…as long as they remember that the feds are not their brothers in arms: they are an invasion of people seeking to harm the people the local police have sworn to protect.

Tags ICE

Government Health Insurance Healthcare

Dear Buddy Carter: Health Care Premium subsidies help people

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date October 5, 2025

NAIC letter header

Buddy Carter, why do you persist in sending lies in your Congressional newsletter? Isn’t the purpose of these newsletters to inform rather than misinform?

Your recent newsletter takes aim at Democrats during the shutdown. You claim that Democrats are keeping the government shutdown in order to provide subsidies for healthcare for undocumented migrants.

You wrote:

Democrats, including Schumer and Jon Ossoff, have now voted for the fourth time to shut down the government, demanding $1.5 trillion in new partisan spending, including nearly $200 billion in taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants.

That partisan spending you’re talking about, is subsidies necessary to keep Affordable Care Act insurance policies affordable for primarily middle class US Citizens and lawfully present migrants. These subsidies were passed into law during the COVID epidemic but now they’re terminating at the end of 2025. This will drive up the cost of health insurance policies for US citizens and lawfully present migrants by an average of 114%. That’s well over double, which most US Citizens and lawfully present migrants can’t afford.

I keep repeating US citizens and lawfully present migrants, because the Affordable Care Act provides health insurance for US Citizens and lawfully present immigrants, only, as this fact check carefully notes.

Now, there is a law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTLA), signed into law by Ronald Reagan decades ago that does allocate a small amount of Medicaid funds to reimburse hospitals for treating anyone and everyone in an emergency life-saving scenario regardless of the person’s status. So, if an undocumented migrant shows up at the hospital with his hand cut off because he’s operating machinery no US citizen wants to operate, the ER has to save his life.

Now, I realize that you may prefer that this person die. I hope, though, as a country we’ve not fallen so far as to wish death on people in this country solely because of the promise of an American dream.

Regardless of the moral ambiguity of letting people die in the street, what the Democrats are pushing for has nothing to do with the EMTLA and everything to do with helping middle class folk, like your voters, afford the premiums for healthcare.

Of course, you think of me as a screaming radical leftist and therefore beneath your interest, even though you are my elected representative, which means you’re supposed to represent people like me. Still, because of your partisan approach to leading, you may discount what I say. Well, that’s fine. So let’s look to someone else who you might find worth your time.

Let’s look to the insurance commissioner for the state of Georgia, who has joined with other insurance commissioner of every single state, in sending to Congress several letters, including the latest, pleading with Congressional members like yourself, to please continue the ACA subsidies.

For more than a year, NAIC has voiced its strong support for continuation of the enhanced premium tax credits for Marketplace coverage. The enhanced credits expire at the end of this year, but health insurance premiums for 2026 must be finalized much sooner. Health insurers have already filed their initial rates for 2026, and state regulators are poised to give them final approval in the coming weeks. We must complete this action soon in order to make plans available for the annual Open Enrollment Period that begins on November 1. Without an extension of the enhanced credits in September, insurers and marketplaces will begin to notify over 20 million consumers in all 50 states of major premium increases in
a matter of weeks.

Contrary to what Speaker of the House Johnson implies by continuing to cancel House sessions, there is an urgency to renew these subscriptions now, before it’s too late. As North Dakota’s—note, North Dakota…not a screaming leftist liberal state—insurance commissioner notes:

Democratic lawmakers say extending enhanced premium tax credits is urgent, with open enrollment weeks away. Republican lawmakers say there’s time to negotiate over a policy later, since the subsidies expire in December.

Who’s right?

“The window is rapidly closing,” says Jon Godfread, North Dakota’s insurance commissioner. He says the enhanced subsidies need to be extended before open enrollment starts Nov. 1. “Let’s do this now.”

If lawmakers miss that deadline, he says, “it’s going to be really, really challenging to go back [to consumers] and say, ‘OK, now we fixed it, please come back and shop at this market that you were priced out of.’ I just don’t believe consumers are going to do that.”

Again, this is about renewing the healthcare subsidies that impact on the people you represent: voters in the state of Georgia. It is not, as you stated in your newsletter, about healthcare for undocumented immigrants. This is a lie, and you know this is a lie. It’s not as egregious as the lie Ryan Zinke told, with his claim that Democrats are somehow trying to kill the $50 billion dollar rural healthcare fund recently passed, but it’s still a lie.

And the sad thing for you is, if you don’t do something now, if Johnson doesn’t stop shutting down the House and actually work with the Democrats, people will know November 1 that you all lied.

Tags Buddy Carter