Salud on Shutdown: Protecting Health Care Is Best Leverage for D.C. Dems to Fight Back against "Fascist Administration"
Santa Barbara's man in Washington breaks down the policy conflict at the center of the government shutdown, and lets loose on Donald Trump's lawless use of military force against U.S. citizens.
Rep. Salud Carbajal on Thursday scoffed at Donald Trump’s attempt to pin the federal government shutdown on Democrats, pointing to the Republicans’ monopoly on power as he assailed the White House occupant as a “fascist.”
In an interview with Newsmakers TV, Santa Barbara’s man in Washington amplified his party’s central argument in the shutdown, now in its ninth day, saying that 10,000 people on the Central Coast would lose their health care if the Republican version of legislation to fund the government, which has stalled in the Senate, is passed.
Carbajal wielded his most scathing rhetoric to date as he also attacked Trump for provoking violence in Democratic cities through reckless and brutal immigration operations — and then dispatching military troops to quell protest and resistance activities that federal agents had themselves triggered — an overall strategy aimed at punishing his political enemies.
“We have an administration, a president, that is running amok, off the guardrails, and is outright acting like a fascist,” Carbajal told Newsmakers.
“He is fabricating emergencies and reasons to deploy our military in domestic settings, but the law is against it,” he added. “He is clearly establishing an environment of tension and provoking communities so that he could then say, ‘look, they’re really doing terrible things,’ although (protesters) are not doing in the states anything that (local) law enforcement cannot contain.”
Sounding the alarm. Carbajal is an innately cautious politician who began Trump’s term in January expressing confidence in the strength of Constitutional restraints, like checks and balances and the rule of law, to contain the excesses of the reality TV president. Now, however, he said he is “sounding the alarm” as Trump disregards and destroys every democratic norm that has governed the nation for 250 years.
“I had hoped that a lot of these things that we are seeing now with this president, extreme things, I really thought that they would not end up the way we are seeing,” the congressman said. “I had better hope for our institutions, for the courts. I had more optimism that this would not be transpiring.”
The unceasing and expanding aggression of Trump’s authoritarian project has led to a change, however.
“This is at a point where it’s extremely perilous,” Carbajal said in the interview. “Call me naive. I maybe was overly optimistic that we wouldn’t get to this point.”
“The more I think about it, he’s trying to create an environment where he can send the military out in the future and create a crisis, like in our upcoming (2026) elections,” he said. “I’m very, very alarmed that, being as unhinged as he is, he could do some really crazy stuff.
“So I’m sounding the alarm to all our citizens across the country, and here on the Central Coast — we have a president that is going amok and acting like a fascist,” Carbajal added. “And I’m very concerned for what the future holds for our country.”
Shutdown politics. On a party-line vote, Republicans last month used their slight majority in the House of Representatives to pass what is called a “continuing resolution” to keep the government operating, legislation that most often historically has been approved as a matter of routine.
But the measure has failed passage in the Senate. Republicans also narrowly control that chamber, but the legislation requires 60 votes; with only a few exceptions, Democrats have refused to vote for it, unless the GOP leadership agrees to amend it to protect federal health care subsidies for millions of people covered under Obamacare, which otherwise will end in December.
As a practical matter, the impasse so far has not directly affected the day-to-day lives of most Americans, although its impact has been felt most notably in long delays at a number of the nation’s airports, caused in part by the refusal of some air traffic controllers to work without pay.
Underpinning the conflict is Trump’s inveterate bad faith in dealing with any and all policy matters, most markedly in his disregard for the constitutional powers of Congress regarding the budget, and his repeated use of so-called “rescissions” to cancel carefully-negotiated fiscal packages, one part of his sweeping and ever-expanding drive to amass more and more power in the executive branch.
“Republicans control the White House, Republicans control the House of Representatives, Republicans control the Senate,” Carbajal said. “They are the ones who have the decisions, the ability and responsibility to keep this government open.
“They can’t seem to muster their votes, they can’t seem to muster themselves to be able to do this. And it seems that they need Democrat votes,” he added. “So the whole responsibility and burden of keeping the government opens falls on their shoulders.”
The crux of the fight: health care. The congressman said that, across the country, people insured under the Affordable Care Act already are receiving notices that their insurance costs will spike, because federal subsidies for Obamacare are about to expire.
Given that Republicans earlier passed a tax cut bill that cut Medicaid benefits for millions of people, Carbajal said that Democrats want the Obamacare subsidies continued as a condition of approving the continuing resolution.
“Medicaid has already been decimated (and) that’s going to result in 30,000 people on the Central Coast likely to lose their healthcare at this point,” he said. “We’re just saying, stop the erosion, stop the (health insurance) crisis from getting worse.
“We are saying you can’t let these (Affordable Care Act) tax credits and healthcare be taken away from more Americans,” he added. “You’ve done enough damage. You’ve already created a crisis for Americans. We are not going to allow you to continue doing that. You have to extend the tax credits. You can’t decimate healthcare for the American people.”
As a political matter, Carbajal said, refusing to approve legislation that would end the health insurance subsidies is an effective strategy for opposing at least some of Trump’s extremist right-wing agenda, at a time when Democrats are shut out of power in Washington.
“We have very, very limited leverage and this is the one-time leverage that we have,” he said, “and we need to focus on something that the American people are experiencing right now. They are getting (health insurance) notices, they’ve started getting notices right now.”
Who owns the shutdown. He believes that a majority of Americans blame Trump and his congressional allies for the shutdown, given that they hold all the power.
“I think if you look at public opinion, at least what I’ve seen, I think they’re blaming the Republicans,” Carbajal told us. “They are seeing an president that is unhinged with tariffs, tariffs that are raising prices for our farmers and our business people, taking healthcare away, and food assistance for the most vulnerable.
“They just see an erratic, dysfunctional, crazy person and his administration running amok,” he added. “They see this as them owning this shutdown. It’s their crisis that they’ve created. And I think Democrats are in a good place fighting for healthcare to stop from it being further decimated and taken away from more Americans.”
Check out our full interview with Rep. Salud Carbajal via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.