The US government shutdown entered its second week as the Senate again rejected rival bills to restart funding and Donald Trump suggested he might be open to negotiating with Democrats over the healthcare subsidies they have put at the heart of the stalemate.
A fifth Senate vote to advance a Republican-written bill that would reopen the government failed on a 52-42 tally – well below the 60-vote threshold needed for advancement. The Democrats’ proposal was defeated in a 50-45 party-line vote. No lawmakers changed their votes from recent days.
Many agencies and departments closed their doors and told employees to stay home last Wednesday, after Congress failed to approve legislation to continue the government’s authority to spend money. The Trump administration warned it was prepared to move forward with plans to slash the federal workforce.
Democrats have refused to back any bill that does not include an array of healthcare-centered concessions, such as an extension of premium tax credits for people covered by Affordable Care Act health insurance. So far, Congress’s Republican leaders have refused to negotiate over their demands until government funding is restored.
But Trump, speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, said he might be willing to strike a deal with Democrats on the ACA subsidies, though he also echoed the conservative claim that “billions and billions” of dollars are being wasted.
“We have a negotiation going on right now with the Democrats that could lead to very good things,” Trump told reporters. “And I’m talking about good things with regard to health care.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, denied any outreach from the president, and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, said the White House has been “radio silent” since a meeting with the president last week.
“Trump’s claim isn’t true – but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table,” Schumer said in a statement. “For months, Democrats have been calling on Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to come to the table and work with us to deliver lower costs and better healthcare for the American people.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that if the shutdown stretched on, a program thats pays for food for low-income mothers and children would exhaust its funding, while government employees would miss a paycheck, though federal law entitles them to back pay. She also reiterated the Trump administration’s threats to fire federal workers.
“We don’t want to see people laid off. But, unfortunately, if this shutdown continues, layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” Leavitt said.
In the days since the shut down began, Russ Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, has cancelled funding for energy projects in several states, as well as transportations developments in Chicago and New York – all of which are areas governed by Democrats.
But though he warned before funding lapsed that he would use it as an opportunity to deepen cuts to the federal workforce, those have largely not yet taken place.
Asked about when layoffs may be announced, Leavitt replied: “We’ll see how the vote goes tonight.”
Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress have shown no signs of budging from their demands in the days since the shutdown began. Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House on recess for a second straight week, in a bid to pressure Senate Democrats to provide the roughly eight votes the Republican funding bill is expected to need to advance in the upper chamber.
“The ball is in the court of the Senate Democrats. There’s only a handful of people in the country who can solve this problem,” Johnson told a press conference.
The Democratic minority has largely stuck to their demands that any legislation to fund the government includes an extension of the ACA tax credits. Created under Joe Biden, the credits are set to expire at the end of the year, and costs for 20 million enrollees of the plans will rise if they are not extended.
The party has also included in their funding bill a reversal of the Republican cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor and disabled, as well as a restoration of funding for public media outlets like PBS and NPR, and a prohibition on Donald Trump’s use of a “pocket rescission” to undo congressional appropriations.
Senate’s Republican majority leader John Thune has vowed to continue holding votes on the parties’ bills. No Republicans have supported the Democratic proposal, while only three members of the minority – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King of Maine – have backed the GOP bill.
Several recent polls have shown Democrats with a narrow edge in the public’s opinion of a shutdown. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that 53% of respondents held the GOP responsible for the shutdown, as opposed to 47% who blamed the Democrats. Seventy percent of those surveyed opposed the shutdown overall.
Johnson reiterated that he would not call the chamber back into session until government funding is restored. He has also said he will only swear in newly elected Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva once the House returns to work.
Grijalva is set to be the 218th lawmaker to sign a petition that will force a vote on a bill to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Johnson and Trump oppose releasing the files, and Thomas Massie, an iconoclastic Republican representative who has led the charge to make the documents public, accused Johnson of keeping the House out of session to delay that vote.
“Why are we in recess? Because the day we go back into session, I have 218 votes for the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Massie said, adding that Johnson “doesn’t want that to be the news”.
Joseph Gedeon contributed reporting
