| As the government shutdown heads into its third week tomorrow, we thought it was time to explain what it’s really about. Yes, you can blame partisan grandstanding and the winner-takes-all atmosphere that prevails in Washington, but Bloomberg News’ John Tozzi unpacks the health-care dispute that’s become the focus of the standoff. Plus: A bank based at Trump Tower has ties to the first family that run deeper than that, and US tariffs are creating new alliances among other trading nations. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Although US politics can feel as if they’re moving deeper into uncharted territory daily, the current budget standoff has a whiff of déjà vu. Twelve years ago, when Barack Obama was president and Donald Trump was a reality TV host bellowing “You’re fired!” at hapless contestants, Congress shut down the government over the law that was officially dubbed the Affordable Care Act but was informally (and perhaps eternally) tied to Obama. Now lawmakers are doing it again—but the balance of power is reversed. Obamacare, which expanded insurance coverage via the carrot of subsidies for the poor and the stick of penalties (later relaxed) for those who go without, squeaked through Congress in 2010. By October 2013 some of the first tangible results of the sweeping measure were materializing. People who had previously been unable to purchase health insurance could begin shopping for plans on a special website called healthcare.gov, even if it suffered growing pains after crashing out of the gate. Republicans, who controlled the House and aimed to defund the ACA, blocked a spending deal for 16 days, a last-ditch effort to impede the law before real people started gaining coverage by the millions.  Obama discussing his health-care law at the White House during the 2013 government shutdown. Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images The ACA survived that shutdown. It also survived attempts to undo it at the Supreme Court and a failed repeal effort during the Republican trifecta of Trump’s first term, when three GOP senators joined Democrats in opposition. After Joe Biden took office in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Democrats bumped up the original ACA subsidies. About three-quarters of enrollees can now buy a plan for less than $10 a month, and higher-income people became eligible for help. As a result, the size of the market exploded to about 24 million people. Those bigger subsidies were meant to end in December 2022, but the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature domestic policy law, prolonged them through the end of 2025. And here we are. Democrats have made a deal on the enhanced subsidies their condition for passing a spending bill that would end the shutdown, which requires 60 votes in the Senate. Like their Republican House counterparts 12 years ago, Democratic senators are flexing the one lever of power in Washington they control. The logic of the 2013 shutdown was to block Obamacare before people started experiencing the program’s advantages. It’s an axiom in politics that once the public has a benefit, it’s hard to take it away. Medicare, controversial when it was created 60 years ago, is considered untouchable now. More than three-quarters of respondents in a poll by health research firm KFF favored extending the assistance, and the people who benefit disproportionately live in states that Trump won. “Growth has been majorly driven by red states that haven’t expanded Medicaid,” says Matt McGough, an analyst at KFF. That political axiom may be tested in this standoff. Making the enhanced subsidies permanent would boost the number of people with health insurance by 3.8 million—but at a cost of $350 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The price tag is likely a nonstarter with much of the GOP. A compromise deal to extend them could still raise costs for millions, but for now both sides seem dug in. Republicans “are desperate to raise premiums on people of this country by 75% to finance their tax cut for the wealthy,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Face the Nation on CBS. “To my Democratic colleagues,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I’m not going to talk to you when the government’s shut down.” The pressure will ratchet up in the days ahead. Federal workers will start to miss paychecks, raising the real hardship inflicted by the shutdown. And on Nov. 1, millions of people with ACA coverage will discover how much more they’ll have to pay next year as open enrollment begins. They’re all someone’s constituents, so it’s not unreasonable to expect a greater sense of urgency on both sides of the aisle. RELATED: Five Ways Out of the US Government Shutdown Standoff | 
