Let me put it this way. Obamacare is the law of the land because Obama was elected again. end of discussion? This is a discussion about funding the government. The house republicans are holding it hostage because they don't like Obamacare. They've tried 46 times to defund, repeal, or whatever obamacare. At some point? Rational people would get the picture. They would wait until, under their own admission, Obamacare gets out into the world and people would (again, in their own view) get angry because it fucking sucks, they would vote in Republican Senators and get a supermajority in the house and everything would be crystal!
Or... maybe they're not all evil people? Okay, I'm willing to say that most of them are completely ignorant of the way average people live, but there's still a perfectly good reason that such drastic measures are being taken.
Once you implement a huge social program like this, it's almost politically impossible to repeal/drastically change, no matter how broken it may become. Consider the Farm Bill in the US. It was created during the great depression to keep farmers from going out of business by allowing the government to directly buy crops and give needy individuals access to that food to keep them from starving. Obviously, really important stuff. But it was always intended as a temporary fix because it completely destabilized the market. Well, 80 years later, it's still renewed every time it comes up for revision because no politician would have any chance of reelection and mar the opinion of their part in general if they're seen as "wanting family farms to fail". The result is that at best, corn sugars are in everything because the government fully subsidizes corn growing which pays farmers nicely while massively adding to the obesity problem, and at worst, the government forces farmers to straight up destroy unthinkable amounts of crops to justify inflated prices to keep farmers in business (here) while that perfectly good food is kept out of foreign markets (where say, people are starving to death) which also causes prices to rise internationally, so impoverished people are priced out of eating, and yeah, also starve to death.
Horrible, but will never fundamentally change because it's seen as a social program. To be clear, I'm not trying to make a false correlation and imply that Obamacare is gonna kill people, just making the point that even the objectively worst government programs become untouchable when they're seen as public services.
The other simple fact is, the US government spends way more than it takes in. Current massive programs like Social Security (which coincidentally was also created during the great depression and many parts of it were also meant to be a temporary service) are running out of money at an exponential rate. Without drastic changes to their tax revenue collection or benefit allocation, SS itself is going to completely deplete its back up funding by around 2033. This isn't some republican fear mongering bullshit, it's reality. But it won't be revised, because it's a social program.
Obamacare will increase government healthcare spending by roughly $621 Billion dollars. The United States is in debt to other countries for about $16.74 trillion dollars and more every day. It's fundamentally unsustainable because just like those other programs the spending will have to increase, but once enacted, it won't be repealed because it's a social program.
Again, I'm sure many if not most of the politicians acting to shut the government down currently are doing so for completely asinine reasons. But there are rational folks out there who realize that when this behemoth gets fully funded, it will be a permanent burden on the already shaky American economy (and in turn, a burden on American citizens), which could have repercussions far, far worse than some not having access to cheap medical insurance.
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