The government shutdown will go into a second week.
Senators rejected another opportunity Friday to reopen agencies and are now out of session until Monday, when leadership is expected to force a fifth vote on a House-passed proposal to fund the government through Nov. 21.
The stalemate comes as the fallout from the shutdown is growing: White House budget director Russ Vought announced Friday he was targeting funding in Illinois, another largely Democratic state, following cuts made earlier in the week to infrastructure projects in New York. The administration is also on the precipice of enacting its widely telegraphed plans to carry out mass firings of federal employees.
So far, however, congressional leaders and the White House are locked in a cold war, with no sign that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find a way to reopen the government anytime soon.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune played down the chances of a rumored meeting Friday with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying he didn’t think it would be productive unless the top Senate Democrat is ready to declare a detente.
“I don’t think there’s at this point a lot to negotiate, and I think at this point a lot of the more productive conversations are happening outside of the leader’s office,” Thune said Friday.
That was a reference to a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators that has been talking for days about finding a path out of the shutdown. But while those conversations are ongoing, involved GOP senators said Friday, they don’t believe enough Democrats are ready to break ranks with party leadership to support the House-passed stopgap bill.
“I’m not optimistic that we have the numbers at this stage of the game, but it really depends on if any of our colleagues want to get to yes,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a key player on the Democratic side, said only, “We’re talking.” She was spotted huddling with some of her GOP counterparts, including Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), around the Senate Friday.
Schumer, in a Friday floor speech, showed no signs of backing down, saying that Congress needs to “act now” on extending health insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats warn that Congress can’t wait past Nov. 1 to extend the subsidies because open enrollment for Affordable Care Act plans will start before then.
“We’re ready to work on a path forward to lower health care costs for the American people and fund the government,” Schumer said.
Rounds agreed that any ACA deal needs to be “done by about Nov. 1” but suggested that Democrats were in a self-defeating position by refusing to reopen the government and allow negotiations to proceed. “Their time is running out as well,” he said.
Therein lies the chicken-and-egg nature of the stalemate: Democrats are demanding a deal on the insurance subsidies to reopen the government, while Republicans insist there can be no deal so long as the government is closed. Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson held a joint new conference on Friday morning to reiterate that message.
“Open the government. Open the discussions,” said Thune’s top spokesperson, Ryan Wrasse, in an X post Friday.
Republicans, instead, are hoping that they can peel off enough Democratic senators to support the GOP-led funding bill by offering them something short of an ACA deal attached to the stopgap spending measure.
Ideas being tossed around the bipartisan group include seeking commitments on moving full-year appropriations bills once the government reopens. They’ve also talked about reaching an understanding about how the ACA negotiations could work — again, only once the government is open. Democrats have also raised their desire to block any White House efforts to claw back already-approved funding for the length of the stopgap bill.
But the talks remain unsettled, and no additional Democrats broke ranks Friday to vote for the House-passed stopgap. The GOP bill failed 54-44, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted for the GOP bill, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against it — same as a Wednesday vote taken just hours after the shutdown began.
Republicans also rejected a Democratic proposal for the fifth time, in a 52-46 vote. That bill would link funding the government through the end of October to various Democratic health care priorities, including an extension of the ACA subsidies and a rollback of some provisions in the GOP megabill enacted this summer.
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