It’s Day 38 of the shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to the crisis yet, although there’s lots of action.
The House has been out of session for 49 days.
The Senate is expected to vote today — for the 15th time — on the House-passed stopgap funding bill. Democrats will block it. What happens after that is a big question mark.
Bipartisan negotiations are expected to continue, but there’s not much hope for an immediate solution. Democrats will keep the shutdown going as they push for new concessions from Republicans on health care, federal layoffs and more.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune may send senators home for the weekend following the CR vote, but no decision on the schedule has been made yet. Either way, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the shutdown will drag into next week at the least. And the fallout from the impasse will continue to worsen.
There’s enormous confusion — and consternation — over the Trump administration’s handling of the SNAP program, which helps feed more than 40 million Americans. A federal judge ordered the administration to fully fund the program on Thursday, but the Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling.
In the meantime, a 4% reduction in flight capacity at major U.S. airports takes effect today and will increase by 1% each day until it reaches 10%. That means thousands of flight cancellations per day, impacting millions of Americans, as well as those visitors flying in and out of the country.
Dems dig in. A bipartisan deal to end the shutdown seemed within reach earlier this week. But Senate Democrats spent a two-hour caucus meeting Thursday taking stock of where things stand and came to this conclusion: Why on earth would we fold now?
Shutdown pain notwithstanding, Democratic senators made the case that they’re in the strongest position they’ve been in since the stalemate began. (“Every day gets better for us,” one might say.) Democrats are convinced that they can get an even better deal if they hold out a bit longer.
Here are just a few reasons why Senate Democrats feel comfortable continuing to block floor action on reopening the government:
— Negotiators haven’t decided on an end date for the CR. The three-bill minibus still isn’t finalized, even among Republicans. There isn’t an agreement on the structure or exact timing for an Obamacare subsidies vote, including whether there will be a side-by-side vote on a GOP alternative, as Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) called for during a closed-door meeting Tuesday. Even though Democrats have multiple chances to filibuster any such agreement, they don’t think they should help advance what would become the vehicle for a deal that’s not even done.
— After Tuesday’s election victories, Democrats believe voters gave them a mandate to keep up the shutdown fight. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), among others, implored their colleagues to “keep fighting” during Thursday’s closed-door session.
— Republicans have told Democrats they’d be willing to discuss language reversing President Donald Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers. Democrats want to push hard on this, as well as overturning OMB’s blue-state funding cuts.
— Trump is at his most volatile and vulnerable right now, and Democrats think they can take advantage. Trump is picking fights with Senate Republicans over the filibuster. The president privately told GOP’s senators that the election results show that the shutdown has been “worse for us than for [Democrats].” So Democrats will try to stoke Trump’s anger and see what happens.
Dems debate. Senate Democrats emerged from Thursday’s caucus meeting proclaiming that they’re “unified.” But let’s acknowledge that not every Democrat is comfortable with this strategy, which effectively amounts to using the pain of a shutdown as leverage to achieve a policy aim.
“I think we can address the health care crisis and not have to shut down the government,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who’s been voting for weeks to end the shutdown. “I don’t believe in this idea of using federal workers and people who rely on federal programs as leverage.”
Others Democrats eager to get past the shutdown argue that they can’t realistically expect to get a better deal than what’s on the table.
Bipartisan talks. Democrats involved in cross-aisle talks have been trying to convince their Democratic colleagues that a commitment to vote on an Obamacare subsidies bill could actually lead to a positive outcome.
It’s a tough sell, though. Most Democrats think it’ll amount to a “show” vote that dies in the Senate.
But, as we scooped on Thursday, the two sides have actually been exchanging paper on various proposed GOP reforms that Democrats are, so far, not recoiling at. At least 10 Republicans have approached Democrats to express interest in an extension of the tax credits, as we scooped on Tuesday. That includes Sens. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) and Jon Husted (R-Ohio), for example — both of whom are on the ballot in 2026.
Then there’s the question of how an Obamacare compromise could get through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t making any guarantees.
Freshmen Senate Democrats huddled Thursday to figure out how to maneuver a bill through the House, resolving that they’d touch base with their former GOP colleagues in that chamber, as we scooped.
Two of those freshmen — Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) — plan to meet today with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.).
The reality is that any Obamacare compromise will be very difficult to pass in both chambers without involvement from Trump.
