Senators left town Friday afternoon for the weekend after another set of unsuccessful votes to reopen the government, but a renewed flurry of bipartisan discussions on the floor provided at least a faint glimmer of hope that agreement could be reached.
Republicans involved in the talks said there’s a deal to be had on a stopgap funding bill with a sidecar commitment on two fronts.
One is to take up legislation dealing with expiring health insurance subsidies by Nov. 1, when open enrollment begins. The other is to pass regular, bipartisan full-year appropriations bills that would make it harder for President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought to arbitrarily cut programs they don’t like.
“End the shutdown, and lots of things can fall into place. And regular order is a huge part of it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., referring to passing regular fiscal 2026 spending bills this month.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said in addition to the three spending bills currently being negotiated by the two chambers — Agriculture, Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch — Republicans would commit to moving on other full-year bills. He said Republicans were ready take up the fiscal 2026 Defense bill and package that with the Labor-HHS-Education bill, for instance.
A number of GOP senators, and House members, are on board with at least temporarily renewing the expanded health care tax credits. But they want to see changes like capping eligibility based on income, which will take some time to hammer out.
“It clearly needs reform, but see that’s just the point, we haven’t figured something out yet,” Hoeven said. “We need to open up the government so we can.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appearing with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., at a news conference earlier Friday, made a similar point.
“Some of the issues that they bring to the table that they demand immediate, easy answers for are not easy answers. They can take a long time to deliberate,” Johnson said.
“We can’t make commitments or promises on the COVID subsidies because that’s not something that we can guarantee that there are the votes there to do,” added Thune, referring to the credits’ pandemic-era expansion that’s set to lapse at year’s end. “But what I’ve said is I’m going to have a conversation with our Democratic colleagues about how to address that issue.”
‘Moratorium on mischief’
So far, that hasn’t been sufficient for enough of the 47 Democratic caucus members to get to the 60-vote cloture threshold on a temporary funding patch. Their worry is Republicans aren’t ready to commit to enough specificity on exactly how an extension of the health care premium tax credits would be structured.
“Democrats are reluctant to end their resistance to the continuing resolution until they have something more firm in terms of what the Republicans will actually do” on the health care credits, Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said. “I think it’s got to be more than conversations.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a former preschool teacher, put it this way: “This is like a 4-year-old telling you that, you know, just give me that candy bar, and then we can talk about the sandwich.”
Democrats also want assurances that Trump and Vought will stop their assault on federal programs and employees targeting blue states and districts. The latest White House move was to freeze $2 billion for Chicago transit projects, in the home state of No. 2 Senate Democrat Richard J. Durbin and Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he’s looking for a “moratorium on mischief” from the White House. For the duration of the continuing resolution, Kaine said there can be “no firings, no clawbacks of federal programs, no [reductions-in-force], no cancellation of economic development projects.” Kaine said he’s brought this up with GOP colleagues who in turn are talking to the White House.
One “possible solution,” according to Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., is to reopen the government to allow time to pass appropriations bills if there are “absolute assurances that we would have the opportunity to take up the tax credit for the Affordable Care Act.”
“I think it’d be a guarantee of a vote, with both sides indicating that they were favorable to it or at least a significant portion of both sides,” Reed said, echoing others who said it would need to be at least a two-year renewal of the tax credits.
But King said even if there’s a deal in the Senate, there’s no guarantee that it will be taken seriously by the president and House GOP leaders. He pointed to Johnson’s repeated comments that Democrats were seeking to fund “health care for illegal aliens” as evidence they weren’t that much closer to a deal.
“It’s just not true. And that doesn’t move the discussion forward here,” said King, who’s been one of three Democratic caucus members so far to vote for the House-passed stopgap funding bill, which was blocked again Friday.
As if to underscore that Republicans want to keep the heat on Democrats until they cave, Johnson announced his chamber was scrapping plans to return to Washington for votes next week.
“I think there is not a clearer illustration of their lack of seriousness in terms of reopening the government and solving the health care crisis,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Friday in response.
Some Republicans said their Democratic colleagues weren’t being clear enough about what they want, and in some cases reneging on things they’d said were acceptable previously.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, who wants a health care deal, said some Democrats, like Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, seemed to genuinely want to reach agreement. Others seemed to keep moving the goalposts, Collins said.
“Then there are those who appeared to have been there but have backed off and added additional demands,” she said.
Rounds, a key GOP senator involved in the health care discussions, said something similar.
“As near as I can tell, everything that we have talked about that they might need, we thought we had pretty well delivered for them,” Rounds said. “And they said ‘thanks, that’s kind of what we had asked for, but we’re not sure it’s going to be enough.’”
In comments after Friday’s votes, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer didn’t place much stock in what Republicans had to offer thus far.
“We want Democrats to talk with Republicans, and so it’s a good thing,” he said. “Unfortunately … if you ask our Democratic senators, the Republicans didn’t offer anything really new, just the same old stuff.”
Red states hit harder
It’s unclear what the next stage of discussions will look like. But Democrats are touting new numbers on the health care premiums issue from KFF, a health policy research organization, that they think Republicans can’t ignore.
KFF found that the end of the enhanced subsidies will hit Trump’s own supporters much harder, with 77 percent of the 24 million enrollees in marketplace plans residing in states Trump carried in the 2024 elections.
“I’m sure the Republican caucus is divided,” King said. “But a lot of the impact of this is going to fall on red states and districts, and it’s going to fall on a lot of middle-income people and that’s why I think they have a stake in getting this resolved as well.”
Meanwhile, the Senate will try again Monday, with another round of votes in relation to the House-passed stopgap funding patch and Democrats’ version — a wish list of party priorities dealing with the expiring health care subsidies, Trump’s funding clawbacks and a repeal of Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation cuts to health care programs.
David Lerman, Jessie Hellmann and Olivia M. Bridges contributed to this report.
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