Buckle in — this shutdown might last a while.
With federal agencies closed going into a second workweek, there are vanishingly few signs that a bipartisan breakthrough is imminent. To the contrary, all indications are that leaders in both parties are only digging in deeper, and efforts to forge a compromise among the Senate rank-and-file are so far sputtering.
Already some lawmakers are eyeing Oct. 15 — the date when active-duty military members could miss their next paycheck — as the next real deadline for action.
Democrats are insisting they will not vote to reopen the government without some kind of an agreement around soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies impacting more than 20 million Americans, and party leaders have been emboldened by flash polling giving them a modest advantage.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, said Republicans are “losing in the court of public opinion” and vowed to continue “standing up for the health care of hard-working American taxpayers.” A CBS News poll released Sunday was the latest of several new surveys showing a small majority of respondents taking the side of Democrats in the shutdown blame game.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, continue to insist any discussions about health care can happen only after Senate Democrats reopen the government by passing a House-approved seven-week stopgap.
Speaker Mike Johnson said in an MSNBC interview Sunday that lawmakers “need the month of October” to hammer out a deal on the subsidies: “There’s a lot of thought that’s gone into that on both sides of the aisle. But we need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down.”
Those talking points have barely shifted from a week ago, when Congress was still on the precipice of plunging into a shutdown. Now, more than five days in, some leaders have their eyes on some key dates they believe could force action.
Most federal workers will miss their first paychecks Friday if agencies don’t reopen by then. Active-duty military members will miss their pay the following Wednesday if Congress does not act.
Speaking to House Republicans on a private conference call Saturday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise identified that latter date as a key pressure point and urged members to hammer Democrats as it approached.
President Donald Trump also alluded to the sensitivity of troop pay in a speech Sunday to a crowd of sailors and others celebrating the Navy’s 250th anniversary: “I want you to know that despite the current Democrat-induced shutdown, we will get our service members every last penny. Don’t worry about it.”
Trump and his deputies are seeking to add to the pressure by threatening to proceed with mass layoffs of federal employees as the shutdown wears on. Top economic adviser Kevin Hassett described potential firings Sunday as a sort of Sword of Damocles that will hang over Democrats in the coming days.
“We think that the Democrats, there’s a chance that they’ll be reasonable once they get back into town on Monday,” he said on CNN. “And if they are, I think there’s no reason for those layoffs.”
But the layoff threats have only caused Democrats to dig in more. Many inside their ranks are calling the spectre of firings a bluff, arguing Trump has no more legal authority to carry out such firings in a shutdown than he would otherwise and that any such moves would be quickly challenged in court.
And even swing-state Democrats are growing comfortable fighting for the position Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have staked out for them: extending the insurance subsidies ahead of Nov. 1, when open enrollment begins for next year’s plans offered on Affordable Care Act exchanges.
“Twenty-four million Americans are going to have their premiums increase. Millions of them are going to lose their coverage,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an interview. “Any answer to the shutdown has to involve fixing that.”
Gallego has been part of a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators who have been holding informal conversations about finding a way out of the shutdown. But so far the discussions have remained nebulous.
While leadership talking points have hardened, there are tensions inside both parties that could grow over the coming days and weeks and bring matters to a head.
House GOP leaders decided Friday not to return to session this week — driven by both a belief that they have nothing further to do after approving the seven-week stopgap last month and concern that having members of the more boisterous chamber together on Capitol Hill would not help the party stick to its message. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) flatly said the House would only make things “worse.”
“This is not a game,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol last weekend. “I don’t know why this is so complicated.”
In contrast, some in the speaker’s leadership circle quietly bristled at Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to recess his own chamber for the weekend after another stopgap vote failed Friday, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.
They privately argued Senate Republicans were giving up an opportunity to keep hammering Democrats. The House’s absence continued to fuel Democratic attacks over the weekend.
“House Republicans continue to be on vacation, spread out across the country and the world and this makes no sense,” Jeffries told reporters Friday. He brought his own members back to town last week but has not made similar plans for this week; House Democrats are set to hold a conference call Monday evening.
In past shutdowns, the majority party has often held votes to reopen particularly popular parts of the federal government in a bid to put pressure on the minority. Senate GOP leaders have no such plans at this point, but Johnson and Thune could bring up legislation to pay troops as the Oct. 15 paycheck deadline nears. Some Republicans, though, still believe Democrats will fold before then.
“We might not even be in a shutdown at that point,” said one senior GOP leadership aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal thinking.
The more profound GOP divide, however, concerns the health insurance subsidies. Republicans from the White House to Capitol Hill leadership suites privately admit the party is increasingly vulnerable on health care but are now committed to an argument that they cannot undertake any negotiations until the shutdown ends while also accusing Democrats of wanting to protect services for undocumented immigrants.
Asked about his position on the subsidies, Trump said Sunday, “We want to fix it so it works.” He said the ACA in general was “not working” and “has been a disaster for the people,” but there is little appetite inside the White House or the GOP generally for reopening the landmark 2010 health law.
Inside the White House, even some of Trump’s most hard-line deputies are coming around to the political realities they face with the coming insurance cliff. Policy officials are readying proposals around the expiring tax credits — one, according to three people granted anonymity to comment on the proposals ahead of an announcement, could include grandfathering in current beneficiaries and cutting off boosted subsidies for new enrollees.
Democrats are dealing with internal splits of their own, with Schumer caught in the middle. Some of his moderate members want to find a quick exit from the shutdown and are exploring a framework deal that could open the government and set up further talks on the ACA subsidies. But others — including Jeffries — want nothing less than an ironclad legislative deal in writing to extend the subsidies first.
“We’ve seen the president — once Democrats and Republicans have agreed on budgets — come along later to rescind those things. So we need something more, much stronger than a promise,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) told reporters last week.
Schumer, for now, is content to highlight the divides on the Republican side — and he is pushing Trump to get involved in talks now.
“Johnson and a whole lot of his caucus don’t like the ACA, don’t want to do the extensions. A lot of Republican senators in the Senate do, but they’re not enough,” Schumer said Friday. “You need Johnson, and you particularly need Trump, to get it done.”
Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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