The US government shutdown appeared set to stretch into its seventh week, with the Senate expected on Friday to take another vote on a Republican proposal to restart funding, but Democrats showing no signs of budging from their demands for an extension of healthcare subsidies.
The 38-day shutdown began on the first of October and is already the longest in US history and has caused unprecedented disruptions to government programs.
Donald Trump’s White House attempted to pause payments under the government’s food aid program for the first time in history, but has been blocked by a court order. The Federal Aviation Administration also slashed commercial air travel, saying weeks of unpaid work by controllers had undermined capacity. About 800 US-linked flights have been cancelled as of Friday morning, according to the tracking website FlightAware.
Yet Congress is showing all signs of remaining static, even as the Senate convenes on Friday morning for what may be the 15th vote on the GOP’s proposal to reopen the government.
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, any spending legislation needs at least some bipartisan support to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. The GOP has for weeks demanded that Democrats back a bill to reopen the government through 21 November, without making major changes to policy.
But after 14 attempts, only three Democratic senators have broken with their party to vote for the legislation, which the House of Representatives approved in September nearly along party lines.
“Democrats instigated this shutdown by rejecting a clean, non-partisan funding resolution,” said John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, on Thursday.
“Republicans weren’t asking them to swallow a bunch of new conservative policies. There isn’t a single partisan policy in the bill. And yet Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to take yes for an answer.”
Democrats are insisting that any funding bill include an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for enrollees of Affordable Care Act health plans. The credits, which were enacted during Joe Biden’s presidency, expire at the end of the year, and people on those plans are expected to soon see their costs jump by an average of 26%, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Democrats’ position was boosted on Tuesday when the party’s candidates swept off-year elections in a number of states, which party leaders attributed to voters being on board with their demands.
“Americans plagued by high costs fired a political torpedo this week at Donald Trump and Republicans,” the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said on Thursday.
“If Republicans were smart, they would get the message after Tuesday that their do-nothing strategy isn’t working. Even Donald Trump knows Americans hold Republicans responsible for this mess.”
Recent polls have shown the GOP taking more of the blame for the shutdown than Democrats.
Trump appeared to acknowledge that dynamic, telling senators from his party on Wednesday that the shutdown was “negative for Republicans”.
He then called for them to vote for scrapping the Senate’s filibuster, which allows the minority party to hold up most legislation that does not receive 60 votes. Thune has said his lawmakers do not support doing that.
