The Senate Is No Closer to Ending the Shutdown, as Republicans Reject Chuck Schumer’s Offer

A week that started with optimism ended with no obvious off-ramp for the longest government shutdown in American history.

There’s no deal, no plan to come up with a deal and a lot of unhappy lawmakers. All the while the effects of the shutdown are impacting millions of Americans.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said plainly: “We’re going to be in a shutdown for a while guys. I mean, it’s just very simple. Everybody can rant and rave and cuss and discuss. But we’re going to be in a shutdown.”

A vote on the House-passed continuing resolution and various other funding bills may have gotten enough Democrats on board earlier in the week, but Tuesday’s election results changed their calculus. President Donald Trump acknowledged the losses across the country and cast it as a sign that Democrats were winning the shutdown messaging war. That’s emboldened Democrats to hold out for more concessions from their GOP counterparts.

“All I know is that the pep rally they had yesterday evidently changed some minds,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Friday. “I thought we were on track to give them what they asked for, at some point they have to take yes for an answer.”

Thune told reporters Friday that the shift derailed what he believed would be a deal, but didn’t go into specifics. And Democrats indeed said they felt united in their position, sensing their advantage.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went to the Senate floor Friday to give a formal offer to Republicans: Democrats would agree to reopen the government in exchange for a clean, one-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, in addition to a bipartisan committee to workshop reforms going forward.

A one-year extension would put the subsidies renewal right around the 2026 midterm elections — a risky gambit for vulnerable incumbents.

“After so many failed votes, it’s clear we need to try something different,” Schumer said. “What the Senate is doing isn’t working for either party, and isn’t working for the American people.”

Republicans quickly cast that offer as “laughable.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham called it a “lousy, terrible, horrible idea,” and said Republicans would not continue for a year to “load up insurance companies with taxpayer dollars”

Sen. Bill Cassidy said he didn’t “think that that’s reasonable,” and suggested it was not a serious offer.

Sen. Rick Scott said Democrats were “OK with people not getting food stamps, but they want to make sure people get health care subsidies that could be worth a million bucks.”

“Tell me how that makes any sense,” Scott added.

Democrats appeared to have been expecting that reaction. Eleven Senate Democrats privately met in Sen. Angus King’s Capitol office shortly before Schumer’s announcement, including Sens. Raphael Warnock, Mark Kelly, Jon Ossoff and Jacky Rosen. A person familiar described the meeting as “productive,” though lawmakers upon exit were mum on the details. The person also said the “tone and approach” in the meeting was not reflective of Democrats’ tone and approach on the floor Friday afternoon.

When a reporter asked Rosen, one of the Democrats in attendance, whether there was any expectation that Republicans would accept Democrats’ offer, she replied: “I don’t even have expectations Republicans are checking out their food banks, or listening to people whose premiums are going up and up, or going to those rural hospitals and health clinics … My expectation is Republicans don’t pay attention to anything except Donald Trump.”

Democrats have been adamant all week that Trump needs to get involved to end the shutdown. But Trump hasn’t engaged — beyond demanding that Republicans end the filibuster to get the government open — even as the shutdown stretches well into its sixth week.

Pressure on senators to reach an agreement ramped up this week with the Federal Aviation Administration directing airlines to cut 10% of flights at 40 major airports by Monday to combat shortages of ground staffing and air traffic controllers. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits have also begun to lapse, throwing millions of Americans into a state of food insecurity, even as the courts have pushed the Trump administration into paying those benefits out for November.

The House-passed continuing resolution has failed on the floor 14 times so far. It’s not yet clear whether the Senate will be voting on Saturday as well.

Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson don’t even like the concept of the CR in the first place. But even they hope that Democrats bite sometime soon.

“It’s a clean CR,” Johnson said. “It’s Biden’s bill. I don’t like the CR. I don’t like the spending levels. I don’t like the fact that we pay people that didn’t work. But that was the 2019 loss, so I accept that as reality.”