It's Over! Trump Caves, Ends Shutdown

Plus, the soaring cost of insulin

Trump Caves, Agrees to End Shutdown — Without Border Wall Money

It’s over, or soon will be. After 35 days, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history neared a sudden and surprising end on Friday, as President Trump and lawmakers reached a deal to temporarily reopen federal departments and agencies for three weeks while negotiations over border security continue.

The deal does not include any money for the president’s desired wall on the southern border.



The Senate late Friday passed the three-week funding bill by voice vote. It was expected to be approved by the House and signed by the president later in the day.



In other words, a day after tweeting, “We will not Cave!,” the president did just that — and with a capital C.



Trump took a deal he could have had 35 days ago — though he also left open the possibility of further action in a few weeks’ time to get the wall he wants if a bipartisan congressional committee to negotiate on border security fails to reach an agreement.



“We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier,” Trump said. “If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15 again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the constitution of the United States to address this emergency.”



The unexpected deal came after the Senate on Thursday failed to pass competing Republican and Democratic plans to reopen the government, sending Senate leaders scrambling for another path forward. “With polls showing the president enduring most of the blame by the public, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, pressured Mr. Trump to agree to the temporary cease-fire,” The New York Times reported.



Trump had previously shot down short-term agreements like the one he endorsed Friday, including the House-passed Democratic proposal that failed in the Senate on Thursday. Six Republican senators crossed party lines to vote for that short-term funding measure, which received more votes than the Trump-GOP plan.



Friday’s announcement also follows reports of intraparty clashes and heated moments at a Senate GOP luncheon before Thursday’s votes, a sign of how the ongoing shutdown was increasingly frustrating Republicans. And it comes as after a series of airport delays rippled across the Northeast as the result of air traffic controllers who called in sick rather than coming to work without pay. Flights to New York's LaGuardia Airport were temporarily halted as a result of air-traffic controller staffing shortages.



Those air travel issues reportedly played a major part in Trump’s decision. “The thing about airport chaos is that lawmakers fly, their family/friends fly, and their donors fly. It’s the red line that shall not be crossed,” Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur tweeted.



Approximately 800,000 federal workers missed a second round of paychecks on Friday because of the shutdown. They will now get back pay — but approximately 1.2 million federal contractors who were affected by the shutdown will not.



Here are some notable reactions to Trump’s announcement:

  • The deal represents “a remarkable comedown for a president who made the wall his unwavering, nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government,” the Times said.
  • “It begs the question, how is this not all for naught? The entire 35-day period was completely for naught… It just defies logic at all,” CNN Political Director David Chalian said.
  • “Conservative media already hammering Trump. Both Drudge and Breitbart running ‘No Wall’ in red siren font on homepages,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan noted.
  • “This could actually depress Trump's approval even further, as Trump supporting MAGA types process the loss. The only way for him to win this game was not to play in the first place,” said Sean Trende of RealClear Politics.
  • “Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States,” conservative firebrand Ann Coulter tweeted. Trump last month rejected a short-term funding deal that would have avoided a shutdown after a backlash from Coulter and other conservative commentators.
  • “Everyone be sure to thank Ann Coulter for the last 35 days. Brilliant strategist,” Democratic commentator and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted.
  • “I hope the president remembers this when the Freedom Caucus types tell him what to do next time. They only have a first move - start a fight. They never have a second move,” an unnamed senior Republican told Politico’s John Bresnahan.
  • “[F]ailure to fund needed physical barriers along our southern border is still not an option. The President is sticking by his commitment to keep our communities safe and has assured me that nothing will deter him from accomplishing that goal…If negotiations don’t result in a solution, executive action is still very much under consideration,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said.
  • “We're not going to build a wall, and we all paid for it,” MSNBC’s David Gura tweeted.

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Tweet of the Day

From CNBC’s John Harwood:

Thousands of Unpaid IRS Employees Did Not Return to Work Early This Week

More than half of the furloughed IRS employees who had been called back to work during the government shutdown to handle tax returns and taxpayer questions did not return as of Tuesday, according to reports from Politico and others, citing congressional aides.



The Trump administration had ordered thousands of IRS employees to return to work, without pay, as part of an effort to minimize damage from the ongoing shutdown. Only about 12,000 of 26,000 employees recalled have come to work, while around 5,000 have sought a hardship exemption to be absent from work, as permitted under their union contract. Another 9,000 could not be reached by IRS managers, agency officials told members of Congress, the Associated Press reports.



The IRS also reported that it is losing 25 information technology staffers a week since the start of the shutdown, with many finding other jobs, Politico said. Monday marks the official start of tax filing season.

Cancer Drug Prices Are Out of Line: WHO

The World Health Organization says that cancer drug prices have little or no connection to the cost of developing and manufacturing the treatments. "The costs of R&D and production may bear little or no relationship to how pharmaceutical companies set prices of cancer medicines,” a recent WHO analysis concluded.

Pharmaceutical companies set prices for cancer drugs with profits in mind first and foremost, WHO said, focusing on the maximum a buyer will pay. The strategy is quite effective in financial terms, with the top five cancer drugs recording more than $60 billion in lifetime sales by the end of 2017, but “often makes cancer medicines unaffordable, preventing the full benefit of the medicines from being realized,” the report said.

Caitlin Owens and Bob Herman of Axios say that the paper “sharply contradicts the industry’s argument that those prices are necessary to recoup the cost of developing new drugs — including the money they spend on products that fail.”

Not surprisingly, big pharma begs to differ. “The report is wrong on the facts and deeply flawed,” a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America told Axios. “The report’s narrow scope fails to properly account for the value that cancer medicines provide to patients, health care systems and societies.”

Chart of the Week: The Soaring Cost of Insulin

The cost of insulin used to treat Type 1 diabetes nearly doubled between 2012 and 2016, according to an analysis released this week by the Health Care Cost Institute. Researchers found that the average point-of-sale price increased “from $7.80 a day in 2012 to $15 a day in 2016 for someone using an average amount of insulin (60 units per day).”

Annual spending per person on insulin rose from $2,864 to $5,705 over the five-year period. And by 2016, insulin costs accounted for nearly a third of all heath care spending for those with Type 1 diabetes (see the chart below), which rose from $12,467 in 2012 to $18,494 in 2016.

Your Prize for Making It Through the Week

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its Oscar nominees this week, which you can see here. Quartz has a rundown on all of the inevitable controversies and snubs, while Variety picks the winners. And Vox lists the 15 best movies of the year that didn’t get nominated.

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