Forget the old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Senate Democrats, after blocking for the fifth time a stopgap funding bill Monday night, called the repetitions just a part of the fight.
“I was in the Marines. You know how many times I had to do the same thing over and over again?” Sen. Ruben Gallego told NOTUS on Monday night. “This is nothing.”
The Senate on Monday once again failed to pass the House-passed continuing resolution that would reopen and fund the government through November. There’s no actual limit on how many times the Senate can take the same vote, meaning the series can, in theory, keep repeating until Republicans and Democrats agree to a deal.
There’s still no real white smoke on one. Until there is, senators are trapped in what seems like a time loop: voting over and over again on a pair of CRs (a Democratic alternative and the House-passed bill) that continue to fail by largely the same margins. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said “yep” when asked Monday if he was planning to keep voting on the CR over and over this week until something changes.
“It is ‘Groundhog Day,’ isn’t it?” Republican Sen. Jim Justice told NOTUS. “I mean, really and truly, it is absolutely ridiculous to be holding up the American people in this kind of situation, because this CR should just sail on through.”
“I guess we can do this until the Democrats decide they want to reopen the government,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS. “It’s ridiculous.” Republicans blame Democrats for obstructing the process and holding the government “hostage.” Democrats insist they don’t yet have what they need on health care.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he’s waiting for Republicans to cut a deal on what Democrats want: extensions of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that the minority party has made a red line. Republicans, for their part, continue to suggest that they are open to negotiating on health care measures — but only after the government is reopened.
“It would be and will be productive when they join us in (passing) extensions of the health care subsidies, which eventually they must do for their own constituencies,” Blumenthal said of the repetitive voting.
There are inklings of bipartisan talks that might include throwing Democrats a bone on health care. Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Monday night that she has a loose “discussion draft” of a plan to lead the government out of the shutdown. Part of it addresses the “minibus” of appropriations bills the House has yet to pass, she said. It also “suggests that there be a conversation on the ACA extension ... after we reopen government.”
“There are a lot of informal discussions, but so far there’s no product, so we have the discussion draft,” Collins told reporters as she flipped a corner of a blue folder open to reveal the top of the draft. She added that she’d circulated the plan “selectively.”
Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican appropriator, told NOTUS that discussions are happening to get the government reopened. He added that the rinse-and-repeat voting is “part of the process.”
“It’s designed to keep people talking and negotiating so that we can get the government opened back up,” Hoeven said. “We’re voting on the same votes, but in the meantime we’re talking to Democrats and saying, ‘Hey, let’s get this figured out, get the government open.’”
But the continual voting to no avail is still frustrating, particularly for appropriators who have spent months crafting bipartisan bills in their committee to fund the government long term.
“It’s discouraging that the outcome is not changing,” Collins told NOTUS. “I would have hoped by now that there would be collaboration to try to end the shutdown.”
In the meantime, Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to bring the House back into session as long as Senate Democrats keep their resistance up. And Democrats in both chambers say they have yet to feel that President Donald Trump is taking them seriously, which further frustrates them.
Ahead of a scheduled weeklong recess next week for both chambers, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis said she thinks the role for the Senate right now is to fund the government with as many votes as it takes.
“We’re the department of redundancy department,” Lummis joked. “But I think that we need to be here. I get why the House is not here, but the Senate needs to be here and continue to vote on this and work to open up the government.”