It’s Day 22 of the government shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to this crisis.
The Senate will vote on the House-passed Nov. 21 CR for the 12th time later today. The result won’t be any different than the 11 previous votes.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has been speaking on the floor since roughly 6:20 p.m. in protest of President Donald Trump’s policies. That’s about 11 hours when this edition went out.
On Thursday, the Senate is set to vote on a bill from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) mandating paychecks for military service members and “excepted” federal employees who’ve been forced to work during the shutdown.
Democrats will filibuster the measure, arguing it only empowers Trump while failing to make a similar guarantee for hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees. Democrats will offer their own proposal covering furloughed workers and everyone else. That’s not going anywhere either.
Then, absent something truly unexpected, the Senate will leave for the weekend on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, federal workers will miss a full paycheck on Oct. 24 as the shutdown fallout gets worse.
The funding nightmare. This unprecedented full-government shutdown is forcing congressional leaders and appropriators to grapple with what can only be described as their nightmare scenario: A year-long continuing resolution set at funding levels from the Biden administration.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s efforts to pass full-year FY2026 funding bills are facing serious headwinds. Democrats blocked the full-year Pentagon funding bill last week, and some Republicans are continuing to stand in the way of a package of three other spending measures: MilCon-Va, Agriculture and Legislative Branch.
Thune has already said the House should consider returning to Washington to pass a new CR that extends beyond Nov. 21. That’s Thune facing the reality that even if the impasse miraculously ended today, there’s little chance that Congress could pass 12 funding bills or an omnibus package or some mix of both by that date.
That’s also without doing anything about resolving the issue at the heart of this clash — the expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, which run out at the end of the year.
The seemingly never-ending shutdown is making Thune and GOP appropriators increasingly skeptical — and dejected — over the prospect of a bipartisan funding deal.
“We need to get the government open and get to work on the appropriations process, or some of these alternatives that none of us want to see happen become more real,” Thune told us on Tuesday. “The longer these guys drag this out, the harder it becomes to see a path where we do it the old-fashioned way. But that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
A full-year CR would be an incredibly difficult task for House Republican leadership, as well. Speaker Mike Johnson has centered his entire speakership around ridding the institution of CRs.
Defense hawks would scream about the damage that the measure would inflict on the Pentagon. It would be a herculean effort for Johnson to jam through this measure. Only Trump’s personal lobbying would make a difference.
Yet Johnson would have problems with individual spending bills negotiated with the Senate too. The Senate’s funding proposals cost way more than House Republicans are willing to spend by tens of billions of dollars.
The funding crisis is especially acute for Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has seen the Trump administration trample on Congress’ power of the purse and make her panel less relevant.
Collins has spoken out against the White House’s unilateral funding moves, including the so-called “pocket rescissions” effort last month. Collins also voted against the rescissions package earlier this year.
A year-long CR would mean no earmarks either — a major loss for Maine and for Collins, who’s up for reelection next year.
“I share the extreme frustration of Leader Thune, but I do not support a year-long CR,” Collins said.
Thune has gone along with the Trump’s administration’s posture on cutting spending even though he clearly doesn’t love it. At the same time, Thune is doubling down on his desire to pass bipartisan full-year funding bills that came out of the Appropriations Committee with big bipartisan majorities. The bills include many Democratic wins.
“If the Democrats keep this up, they will make it not only a possibility, they will make it an inevitability,” warned Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), an appropriator. “We’ll have no choice but to end up with a CR.”
But Democrats say they see no reason to trust GOP leaders given their refusal to condemn or try to block the administration’s funding moves. The trust deficit between the two sides was bad before the shutdown, and it’s only gotten worse over the last three weeks. There’s still no agreement on FY2026 toplines either. Those require House buy-in.
“There’s bipartisan desire to get something done and avoid a full-year CR,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), an appropriator. “It’s a little hard to get to toplines and to move any further in the regular order … I think [the House has] worked 11 of the last 90 days if I’m not mistaken. So, the House has to show up.”
There are some Democrats who are holding out hope for a bipartisan process, even as they maintain their hardline posture vis-à-vis the shutdown.
But if the eventual shutdown-ending funding bill extends current funding until early 2026, some senators don’t see a year-long CR as inevitable. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), an Appropriations Committee member, noted that Congress has “routinely” gone well into the next calendar year before passing a funding measure for the rest of the fiscal year.
