Senate leaders plan to take up a stopgap funding measure in a rare Friday session to test whether a Democratic logjam could finally break to end the longest partial government shutdown in history.
But after a long day of closed-door talks, Democrats remained mostly tight-lipped about their intentions, with some suggesting they were prepared to continue the standoff until they secure an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. Republicans leaders have insisted they would not negotiate on health subsidies until the government is reopened.
“The plan is to reopen the government and lower health care costs,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., a senior appropriator who has negotiated with Republicans on a shutdown exit. “As soon as we have a clear path to that, we’re going to take it.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said only that his caucus held “a very good, productive meeting” on a shutdown strategy. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, took a more forceful stance to continue the fight.
“I would hope that every Democrat stands firm and understands there cannot be an agreement until we make sure that health care premiums are not raised to outrageous levels,” Sanders told reporters.
Pressure for a deal has intensified in recent days as the impact of the shutdown grows. The Federal Aviation Administration planned to start cutting flights by 10 percent at 40 high-traffic airports starting Friday, while food stamp benefits shrink, Head Start early education programs start to close, and a heating aid program for low-income families risked running out of money.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told his conference he planned to take up the doomed, House-passed continuing resolution, extending funding through Nov. 21, and seek to amend it to reopen the government through an undetermined date. He and other GOP leaders have favored a funding extension into January to avoid a pre-Christmas omnibus measure.
The stopgap bill could be accompanied by a compromise version of three full-year appropriations measures that passed the Senate months ago in a combo package. Those are the Agriculture, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction-VA bills.
But that plan hinges on resolving discrepancies between the House and Senate versions of those bills and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters Thursday that senators are likely to place “holds” on those measures while final sticking points are negotiated.
The Agriculture bill, for example, faces resistance from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., because of a provision to restrict the use of industrial hemp by excluding any cannabinoid products containing “quantifiable” amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating compound in marijuana.
“I’m not really against getting on the bills, but I don’t want to kill an entire industry,” Paul said. “They’re going to kill the farm industry. All the plants will be illegal.”
Even a resolution on appropriations bills would be no guarantee that Senate leaders could muster the 60 votes needed to end the shutdown. But by holding a procedural vote to take up the spending measure, Kennedy said, “We’ll find out how serious the Democrats are or not.”
Health care obstacle
There was no indication that Republicans were prepared to give ground on the key Democratic demand: an extension of enhanced health insurance subsidies on government-run exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act.
Thune stressed again he was not willing to negotiate a subsidies fix until the government is reopened. “I’ve made this very clear to them: I can’t guarantee them an outcome,” he said of Democrats. “I can guarantee them a process, and they can litigate the issue, get the vote on the floor.”
In another complication, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is resisting any push for a guaranteed House vote to address the expiring health care subsidies. Democrats have repeatedly emphasized the importance of buy-in from both the White House and the House on any off-ramp deal.
“No, because we did our job, and I’m not part of the negotiation,” Johnson said at a news conference. “The House did its job on Sept. 19. I’m not promising anybody anything. I’m going to let this process play out.”
Democrats have been torn over a shutdown exit strategy, with divisions only growing after Tuesday’s elections, which produced Democratic victories across the country.
Some Democrats, emboldened by those victories, have been pressing to continue the shutdown to exert maximum leverage for securing health subsidies. Others have sought to try to find a middle ground, urging an end to the shutdown with some commitment by Republicans toward finding a health care fix.
But by late Thursday, the faction seeking to continue the fight appeared to hold the upper hand, though the situation remained fluid.
“We had a really good conversation where we know what our mission is: to try to take the message from Tuesday that people want us to fight to keep costs down,” said Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn. “And we want to stay together.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., declined to say how she planned to vote Friday, but said: “I can tell you that Thune isn’t doing himself any favor by not coming to the table to discuss those tens of millions of people [who] are about to have to make the difficult choice of choosing their rent or their health care.”
Senators also were trying to include a provision that would allow for the rehiring of federal employees who were laid off during the shutdown. “We’re still negotiating that language,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine.
To increase the pressure on that front, Democrats introduced a bill Thursday to prohibit additional layoffs and rehire an estimated 4,000 workers who received layoff notices.
“This bill makes clear that no administration can use manufactured chaos as a backdoor way to purge the federal workforce,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the bill’s chief sponsor. His state is home to more federal workers than any other save California as well as the District of Columbia, according to the most recent Office of Personnel Management data.
Commitments in question
Democrats have also expressed concern about agreeing to a plan in the Senate that might not win the backing of President Donald Trump or House GOP leaders. And it wasn’t clear Thursday whether any such commitments had been made.
“I don’t see any movement by the president or the speaker or the leader to do that,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “So if their position remains, ‘we will not speak to you,’ we’re gonna have a really hard time resolving this.”
Trump at a breakfast with Republican senators on Wednesday said that the shutdown is negatively impacting voters’ views of the GOP. But he also seemed to pour cold water on the idea of negotiating with Democrats, calling them “kamikaze pilots” and pushing for his party to end the Senate filibuster. Doing so would allow Republicans to reopen government with a simple majority vote.
Lia DeGroot contributed to this report.
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