Lawmakers Slowly Realize It’s Easy To Start a Shutdown — But It’s Hard to End One

A grim reality is taking over Capitol Hill.

Getting into a shutdown is easy, getting out of one is very, very hard.

“I just can’t express to you how stupid I think this is and how destructive this is,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS.

After nearly a week of the shutdown, lawmakers have little to show for it. Republicans and Democrats have not reached a deal. They have not even floated a concept of a deal — at least publicly — and the basic contours of the shutdown politics remain the same.

The working plan remains that the Senate will continue to vote on the Republican stopgap plan to fund the government until one side budges. That bill, which passed in the House over two weeks ago, has already failed in the Senate four times. Speaker Mike Johnson decided to keep the House out of session an additional week.

“The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government,” Johnson said. “That’s plain and simple.”

Democrats are still demanding that Republicans change their continuing resolution to extend expiring Affordable Care Act tax subsidies and insert restrictions on the Trump administration’s ability to claw back congressionally approved funds. And Republicans say they won’t tie those issues to the government funding bill.

When reporters asked Trump himself whether he was open to extending the subsidies on Sunday, he responded: “We want to fix it so it works. It’s not working. Obamacare has been a disaster for the people.”

Perhaps the only glimmer of hope came when cameras caught a bipartisan gathering of senators talking on the floor last week, sparking some brief excitement. Onlookers speculated that lawmakers talking to each other might provide the kindling for agreement, only to be disappointed minutes later when senators said the conversation fizzled without any notable progress.

“What troubles me is that the initial dialogue with the Republicans on the floor doesn’t seem to have blossomed into anything meaningful,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said on Friday. “I hope it does.”

Republicans told reporters they share Durbin’s concern about a lack of meaningful developments.

“I think there were a lot of good conversations between people on both sides of the aisle that want to see a shutdown terminate,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

But, she added, “just because we’re talking doesn’t mean that we’re there yet.”

While lawmakers spend the weekend hoping for progress — or galavanting around a National Republican Senatorial Committee retreat in Georgia — the stakes grow higher by the day.

For many government employees, paychecks will soon lapse. That includes members of the military who are expecting their next paycheck on Oct. 15. The Trump administration is furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, including 89% of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87% of the Department of Education and 81% of the Department of Commerce. The Office of Management and Budget has also dangled plans for agencies to permanently fire federal workers, who are on edge awaiting specifics.

What’s more, the longer the shutdown goes on, the more willing President Donald Trump has been to retaliate against Democrat-led states.

Johnson, for one, on Sunday told NBC’s Meet the Press that those layoffs are “regrettable,” but blamed Democrats for prolonging the shutdown altogether.

Still, there’s not much reason lawmakers believe this week will be more fruitful than the last.

Multiple Republican senators told NOTUS that they are pinning their hopes on a critical mass of Democratic senators caving without a concession. Already, three Democrats are voting with Republicans on the continuing resolution — Sens. John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

At least five more Democrats will have to join Republicans to reach the upper chamber’s 60-vote threshold, and Republican leadership told NOTUS last week that they are not considering lowering that threshold by eliminating the filibuster.

But the likely targets, including moderate retiring Democrats Sens. Gary Peters and Jeanne Shaheen, have not shown signs of breaking — yet.

“We can vote and vote and vote,” Hawley said. “But it’s up to basically five people.”

Even senior lawmakers aren’t betting on when a shutdown might end, often referring reporters to historical examples. The government has shut down only three times since 2000, and the timelines have ranged from two days to 34.

In the interim, the four corners of congressional leadership appear content to focus their energies on their messaging strategies, which consist of pointing fingers across the aisle.

Republicans use the phrase “Schumer shutdown” in virtually every conversation with reporters.

“This truly is the Schumer shutdown,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis told NOTUS, adding that Democrats need to “face reality. They are not in control of the House, the Senate or the White House.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have their own spin.

“Throughout this week, Donald Trump has been missing in action,” Jeffries told reporters Friday. “He remains in the presidential witness protection program. House Republicans are on vacation all across the country and the world, and Senate Republicans continue to vote on the same partisan Republican spending bill that’s dead on arrival.”

Still, the Democratic senators voting with Republicans on the continuing resolution clearly disagree with leadership’s assessment that their party’s fight is a worthy one.

King, for one, voted for the Republican-led continuing resolution for the third time on Friday. He believes “that the results of a shutdown are more negative than we’re imagining right now” and that “it’s hard to justify standing up to Trump by giving him a new weapon,” apparently referring to the president’s threats to fire federal workers and cancel projects in blue states during the shutdown.

“That’s the principal reason for my vote,” King said. “The shutdown provides additional — I believe — running room for them to do damage.”

He quickly added: “I hope I’m wrong.”