Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, explained why he and seven others joined Republicans on Sunday night to vote to end the government shutdown after 40 days. “It wasn’t working,” King said when asked what the 40-day shutdown accomplished. “How long would it take to not get a response to say it isn’t working? In other words, it’s been six weeks. The Republicans made it clear they weren’t going to discuss the health care issue-the Affordable Care Act tax credits-until the shutdown was over.” “Here’s the way I would put it: as I assessed it, there was zero chance of dealing with the ACA issue as long as the shutdown continued. Now, I don’t know-maybe fifty-fifty,” he said.

SENATOR ANGUS KING: Those of us here-and certainly those of us participating in the Democratic caucus-are 100% committed to working on the issue of the ACA premium tax credits and preserving access to health care for millions of Americans. The question before us is: what is the best way to get there? It was our judgment, after six weeks-going on seven weeks-of this shutdown, that that path wasn’t working. The test was last week when the Majority Leader put forward a proposal. It was a pretty simple, straightforward one-year extension of the tax credits. It was met with universal opposition in the Republican caucus. It wasn’t going to happen. So the question before those of us who decided to vote yes tonight was: does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits? Our judgment was that it would not produce that result. The evidence for that is almost seven weeks of fruitless attempts to make that happen. Would it change in a week, or another week, or after Thanksgiving or Christmas? There’s no evidence that it would. What there is evidence of is the harm that the shutdown is doing to the country-what it’s doing to millions of federal workers, but also to tens of millions of recipients of SNAP. This is a true crisis for those individuals. Soup kitchens can’t fill the gap. Food pantries can’t fill the gap. SNAP is an essential part of the food provision program in this country. So we were faced with a strategy, or a series of steps, that wasn’t working to achieve the goal we wanted with regard to the ACA-but that was at the same time creating hardship and difficulty for millions of people across this country. I believe that we are closer tonight to a vote on the ACA tax credits than we were this morning. Part of this agreement-and you heard the Majority Leader on the floor today-was his commitment to putting a bill on the floor before the second week in December, a bill that would be drafted by the Democrats concerning health care and the ACA. That is a big step, because otherwise there’s no way for the minority to get a bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It has to be through the office of the Majority Leader. So that was a major step-to get the Majority Leader to agree to make that commitment tonight on the Senate floor. The sum is that we are closer to the possibility of work on the ACA tax credits for the people of this country than we were yesterday, a week ago, two weeks ago, or a month ago. So this agreement tonight is a win for the American people. It’s a win for those who are so insistent-and whom I hear from all the time-saying, Protect our health care. Our judgment is that the best way to do that is to get a bill on the floor. Is there a guarantee it will pass? No. Is there a guarantee it will pass in the House? There is actually some very strong interest in the House-a possibility of a bipartisan bill and a discharge petition-and perhaps we’re on the way. We have that expression from Republican senators who are interested in working on a bill that will deal with the ACA issue and perhaps additional health care issues at the same time. What happened tonight is not the closing of a chapter-it’s the opening of an opportunity. The chapter it does close is the damaging shutdown that is only getting worse, that is only going to impact more and more people. And it’s an opportunity for us to move forward on behalf of all the people of this country-on the issue of health care, but also on making the federal government function. … REPORTER: Just to follow up on that, Senator, because you’ve said you want to ensure that this vote will happen-but a vote on extending the tax credits does not guarantee that it’s going to pass. How do you explain to your constituents why it was worth it to put up this fight for so long when, in the end, you didn’t get your key demand? SENATOR ANGUS KING: Because it wasn’t working. How long would it take to not get a response to say it isn’t working? In other words, it’s been six weeks. The Republicans made it clear they weren’t going to discuss the health care issue-the Affordable Care Act tax credits-until the shutdown was over. We tried to keep working that for six weeks. It didn’t happen. The vote that we have now is not a guarantee, for sure-but it’s more of a guarantee. Here’s the way I would put it: as I assessed it, there was zero chance of dealing with the ACA issue as long as the shutdown continued. Now, I don’t know-maybe fifty-fifty-but there’s a lot better chance now than there was this morning. Because nothing was happening, and there was no evidence that another week, or another two weeks, or Thanksgiving or Christmas, was suddenly going to make the Republicans come to us and say, Oh, now we want to talk about the ACA. If they weren’t going to do it by now, what’s going to change in the next two weeks to make them do it? That was really the assessment. Again, I would say, as of this morning, there was a zero chance of having any work on the ACA. Now there’s a measurable chance. Will it be everything that everybody wanted? No, because we need 60 votes, and so there’s going to be a negotiation. But Republicans have already started saying, Well, if you did this or did that, maybe we can get there. So I would take a reasonable chance against no chance every day. And the other piece-and we didn’t really emphasize this-there are three important appropriations bills in this that would lock in SNAP for the rest of the year at a very substantial rate, plus other benefits. Veterans’ funding is guaranteed if we can get these three bills through. So there’s a plus on that. I think the odds are that we have a better chance of doing something about the ACA than we did not going into this. At some point, you have to decide: what is the best strategic step forward? And we believe the evidence shows that what we were doing wasn’t working-and therefore, let’s try something else.

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