Jodi Hendricks – New Mexico Family Action Movement
November 19, 2025
New Mexicans were used as leverage over the last several weeks. Not protected, not prioritized. We became political leverage. Our senators and representatives had the chance to vote for a continuing resolution that would reopen the government and keep paychecks and benefits flowing, and instead they chose political theater over the people who sent them there in the first place.
This shutdown was not a distant Washington drama. It dragged on for 43 days, the longest in U.S. history, and New Mexico felt the strain. Federal workers at Kirtland and Holloman waited to see if their paychecks would show up. SNAP recipients wondered if benefits would be delayed. Families here were doing what they always do in a crisis: stretching dollars, tightening groceries, and hoping Washington would finally get its act together.
The deal on the table was straightforward: a 31-page continuing resolution to reopen the government, extend current funding through January 2026, and fully fund SNAP and the VA through September. It also promised a later vote on extending the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, the health-care subsidies Democrats want to keep in place, but it did not include the extension up front. That became the sticking point.
Because of that, Senators Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich voted against advancing the bill that would reopen the government. Their explanation was: “We voted ‘no’ today because this ‘deal’ is one that many New Mexicans literally cannot afford, and we refuse to let Donald Trump bully us into choosing between a mother in Roswell feeding her kids, a couple in Española affording their health care premiums or a VA employee in Albuquerque making their next rent payment.”
At the same time, all three New Mexico House members said they would vote against that same Senate-brokered deal to reopen the government, arguing the ACA premium tax credit extension should come first. In other words: no health-care subsidy fix, no vote to reopen.
Representative Melanie Stansbury went on CNN and accused Republicans of using “the hunger of children” as leverage. But Jake Tapper pushed back with the obvious question: if you say families are being harmed by the shutdown, why won’t Democrats vote to open the government first and fight about health-care subsidies after? The answer never got clearer, because it couldn’t. The logic simply wasn’t there. It wasn’t republicans using anyone as leverage as they were the ones voting to reopen the government. It was democrats, who voted 14 times to keep it closed.
Here is what most New Mexicans understand. You fund the government first. You protect people first. You make sure paychecks, benefits, and basic services are not on the bargaining table.
Then you negotiate. Then you fight over policy. Then you try to pass the bills you want passed.
What you don’t do is hold up the lives of working families to get leverage in some larger political fight. The incomes of federal workers are not leverage. SNAP benefits are not leverage. Tribal clinics and rural hospitals are not leverage. And New Mexicans did not elect anyone to use their livelihoods as bargaining chips.
New Mexico needs representation that puts people first — not political advantage, not party strategy, not symbolic gestures. We deserve leaders who understand that the bare minimum of public service is keeping the government open and keeping families out of the crossfire. Our paychecks aren’t poker chips
If our current delegation can’t agree on that, then it’s time for New Mexicans to elect leaders who can.
