The government shutdown will go into a second week.
Senators rejected another opportunity Friday to reopen agencies and are now out of session until Monday, when leadership is expected to force a fifth vote on a House-passed proposal to fund the government through Nov. 21.
The stalemate comes as the fallout from the shutdown is growing: White House budget director Russ Vought announced Friday he was targeting funding in Illinois, another largely Democratic state, following cuts made earlier in the week to infrastructure projects in New York. The administration is also on the precipice of enacting its widely telegraphed plans to carry out mass firings of federal employees.
So far, however, congressional leaders and the White House are locked in a cold war, with no sign that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find a way to reopen the government anytime soon. Underscoring the stalemate, House GOP leaders announced Friday they would not return to session next week.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he had a “brief chat” with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the floor Friday afternoon that did not produce a breakthrough — or anything close to it.
“I think the path forward is more likely to be achieved with rank-and-file members,” Thune said.
That was a reference to a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators that has been talking for days about finding a path out of the shutdown. But while those conversations are ongoing, enough Democrats weren’t ready to break ranks with party leadership to support the House-passed stopgap bill.
“I’m not optimistic that we have the numbers at this stage of the game, but it really depends on if any of our colleagues want to get to yes,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a key player on the Democratic side, said only, “We’re talking.” She was spotted huddling with some of her GOP counterparts, including Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), around the Senate Friday.
Schumer, after the Senate’s failed votes, warned that Republicans would not be able to get 60 votes without coming to the table to negotiate.
“They thought they could bludgeon us and threaten us and scare us,” he said. “It ain’t working.”
During a news conference, Schumer touted polling showing that Americans blame Trump and Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown. As he spoke, he stood next to a poster featuring another survey showing support for extending health insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
Democrats have made an extension of those tax credits the centerpiece of their demands, and they are warning that Congress can’t wait past Nov. 1 to extend the subsidies because open enrollment for Affordable Care Act plans will start then.
“There are a lot of people asking us, why now? The crisis is now. People are getting their letters now,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Rounds agreed that any ACA deal needs to be “done by about Nov. 1” but suggested that Democrats were in a self-defeating position by refusing to reopen the government and allow negotiations to proceed. “Their time is running out as well,” he said.
Therein lies the chicken-and-egg nature of the stalemate: Some Democrats are demanding a deal on the insurance subsidies to reopen the government, while Republicans insist there can be no deal so long as the government is closed. Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson held a joint news conference on Friday morning to reiterate that message.
“We can’t get to that conversation until we get the government back open,” Thune said about the fate of the tax credits.
Republicans, instead, are hoping that they can peel off enough Democratic senators to support the GOP-led funding bill by offering them something short of an ACA deal attached to the stopgap spending measure.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who described herself as “encouraged,” said the talks were focused on “what are we going to do when we get back to business.”
“I think there were a lot of good conversations between people on both sides of the aisle that want to see a shutdown terminated,” Murkowski said. But asked if she thought the shutdown wouldn’t last long, she laughed: “Oh, I have no idea.”
Ideas being tossed around the bipartisan group include seeking commitments on moving full-year appropriations bills once the government reopens. They’ve also talked about reaching an understanding about how the ACA negotiations could work — again, only once the government is open , including potentially developing a framework for how the talks could go. Democrats have also raised their desire to block any White House efforts to claw back already-approved funding for the length of the stopgap bill.
But the talks remain unsettled, and no additional Democrats broke ranks Friday to vote for the House-passed stopgap. The GOP bill failed 54-44, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted for the GOP bill, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against it — same as a Wednesday vote taken just hours after the shutdown began.
Republicans also rejected a Democratic proposal for the fifth time, in a 52-46 vote. That bill would link funding the government through the end of October to various Democratic health care priorities, including an extension of the ACA subsidies and a rollback of some provisions in the GOP megabill enacted this summer.