U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio of Western Pennsylvania blasted a vote in the U.S. Senate to end the federal government shutdown — and some Senate Democrats — in a Monday-night appearance on The Daily Show, calling the deal "weak" and out of touch with voters' needs.
"I think this is what we've come to expect from this leadership and from what the Senate's been doing," Deluzio told host Jon Stewart. "They did not stand their ground. And it's a deal that I think is a bad deal. I think it's weak."
Deluzio and fellow Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York appeared on the popular cable program after U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and seven other Democrats joined with Republicans to end the shutdown, which was well into its second month.
Democrats had been holding up the extension based on hopes that doing so would give them leverage to secure an extension of federal tax credits that make health care more affordable. Without the extension, premiums are expected to spike for millions of Americans who are insured through government exchanges such as Pennsylvania's Pennie. The deal on which the Senate agreed contains no such extension, though Republicans who control the upper chamber have said they will hold a vote on the matter.
That isn't good enough, Deluzio said on Monday.
" I don't know any constituents of ours that want us to just wilt," he told Stewart in the roughly quarter-hour segment. "They want us to stand our ground for something that matters"
Calling health care "a real thing that is bankrupting families," he added: "That is something they want us to fight for. And we have been, and to see what happened … in the Senate is just — it's weak."
Asked by Stewart whether the deal surprised him, Deluzio said, "I wish I could say it did."
Deluzio noted that whatever accommodation Democrats made in the Senate, "There's not even an agreement to have a vote in the House," where Republican leadership was under no obligation to vote on — let alone pass — an extension of insurance subsidies.
"That on its own tells you this is a weak deal," he said.
Perhaps even harsher in his criticism was Ryan, who called the deal "pathetic."
" People want to know: 'Are you gonna actually fight for me right when it matters, or are you gonna cave?' And that — that is the thing that matters, especially in this moment," Ryan said.
Deluzio had criticized the deal prior to the vote, and his condemnation of it Monday night was similar to the criticism voiced by fellow Western Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Summer Lee at a campus town hall the same evening. Lee said that while she sympathized with concerns about the pain and disruption caused by the shutdown, she would vote no on "a deal that got nothing.
"We will not get the health care extension; the promise that they will vote for it later is not going to come," she added. "They knew that, and they did it anyways."
Neither Ryan nor Deluzio called out particular senators by name, but the roster of Democrats who backed the deal included Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman has been critical of the shutdown from the outset, and he had voted with Republicans to end the shutdown more than a dozen times prior to this week.
Fetterman renewed his criticisms after the vote, making the latest in a number of online joint appearances with his Republican counterpart Sen. Dave McCormick.
"We both agree that shutting our government down is wrong for our commonwealth and for our nation, and I refuse to shut our government down," Fetterman said.
"You can always count on us to work together to put Pennsylvania first," said McCormick.
Fetterman's vote is the latest move that has attracted the criticism of progressives and other rank-and-file Democratic voters. And it is likely to be part of the case of any effort to primary him, should he run for re-election in 2028. Deluzio himself has been mentioned as a potential challenger to Fetterman. So has his predecessor, Conor Lamb, who lost to Fetterman in the 2022 Senate primary and has been critical of Fetterman in recent months.
Lamb renewed that criticism of Fetterman in a social media post, calling Fetterman's position on the matter "just sad." In the face of real fear about health insurance rates, Lamb said of the deal, "I can't tell what the Democrats are achieving."
Even so, Fetterman continued to criticize the shutdown and his party on network television news, saying the shutdown had unleashed "mass chaos."
"American decided to put us in the minority" in the 2024 elections, he said, adding that the "essence of democracy [is] to find the way forward because our parties have different priorities.
That's why I've always refused to put our government in the middle of all of it because millions and millions of American lives will be impacted that way," Fetterman said.
"I want to make health care more affordable," he added. "But I also think that our government should never be held as a hostage."
Read more from our partners at WESA.
