The News
Congress is about to experience a painful reality for the first time in six years: Getting into shutdowns are easy. Getting out of them is a lot harder.
The impending government shutdown is injecting new uncertainty into an already chaotic Washington. No one knows when it’s going to end, and neither party took the obvious exit paths they were offered over the last few weeks.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to blink,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
As the midnight deadline nears, each party has the same plan; they’re waiting until the other guys cave. Which might take a while.
Lawmakers are forecasting an interminable staring match, with both sides dug into their positions and a wild card in President Donald Trump. Democrats want a deal addressing skyrocketing health insurance premiums, but Republicans say Democrats can pound sand until they vote for a short-term spending bill. And, for now, Trump is backing them.
“Democrats are betting that they will skate and not get any of the blame. This certainly seems different,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Semafor. He added that Democrats would get nothing while the government is closed “if I have anything to say about it.”
It’s a mutual feeling, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.: “There’s nothing here for Democrats to do except say, ‘If you want our votes, you got to come talk to us.’”
Previous shutdowns damaged the standing of both parties. Even a short one wastes time and money as federal employees implement, and then undo, extensive plans — and there’s no indication so far that this shutdown will be short.
A senior administration official said Trump and Democrats haven’t had additional conversations since their Monday meeting. The official described the idea that Trump may be amenable to accepting Democrats’ full list of demands as wishful thinking from the opposing party.
The Senate will vote again on Republicans’ short-term spending bill Wednesday after Democrats were set to reject it for the second time Tuesday. They’ll stop voting “between sundown [Wednesday] and sundown Thursday in observation” of Yom Kippur before voting on the proposal through the weekend, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told reporters.
The contours of a possible deal are obvious: Both Republicans and Democrats want to stop health care premiums from spiking when enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse at the end of the year. But Democrats want a deal now, and Republicans say nothing can happen until their bill passes.
“The negotiation happens when the government’s open,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
While Republicans are concerned about the cost of extending the subsidies without any changes, top Democrats said this week they are open to implementing GOP-sought reforms like an income cap for subsidy recipients.
“You don’t want to have somebody [like] a DC lawyer making a million dollars a year getting the enhanced tax credit,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said.
“There’s enough flexibility on both sides of the aisle to be able to come up with a reasonable solution that is going to benefit people who need to continue to have health insurance,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who has penned legislation to extend the subsidies.
Even if leaders did strike an agreement, the House would have to pass it first — and House Republicans are out of town through the end of the week. House Democrats returned Monday in protest.
“Where are they? Why aren’t we sitting down and negotiating this?” House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., told Semafor.
Know More
The White House is aiming to make a shutdown as painful as possible. The Office of Management and Budget is directing agencies to plan for layoffs, and Trump is teasing other changes.
Kennedy said OMB Director Russ Vought is likely to “punish [Democrats] for the rest of their natural lives for this or until, until the shutdown ends. Whichever lasts longest.”
But Democrats have so far mostly dismissed those threats as a negotiating tactic. Their view: Trump is going to do what he wants, with or without a shutdown.
“We’re dealing with an administration that has just decided to destroy the Department of Education,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Semafor. “Their threats are very shallow, considering that they’ve already put a lot of harm out there. The most important thing that we can do is use leverage right now.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s government website added a notice to its homepage blaming “the radical left” in the event of a shutdown. And Republicans are pointing to OMB’s plans as they pressure their colleagues to cave.
“They have really given to Donald Trump the ability to do many of the things that they previously were fighting him on,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., told reporters. “I’m not comfortable with it, because it’s going to be fast.”
Beyer said he’s hearing from constituents concerned about potentially losing their jobs.
The one thing both sides agreed on Tuesday: Their leaders aren’t talking enough.
“I don’t think there’s been any meaningful direct discussions, to be honest with you,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. “I just don’t think there’s been any kind of real attempt on either side to bridge the gap.”
“And I think both sides, No. 1, are overestimating who will own it,” he added.
Burgess, Eleanor, and Shelby’s View
We see two ways this thing ends: Either Democrats cannot sustain their position, or Republicans throw them a bone — a guarantee, even — on the health care subsidies.
It’s not clear exactly what it would take to move Democrats: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says that any concession must be written into legislation, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is less explicit.
Both have suggested they still see space to nudge Trump into an agreement that the rest of the GOP dislikes.
“They’re gonna try to get in front of Trump and make some kind of deal because the president likes to make a deal,” Kennedy said of Democrats. “There are enough people around the president that are going to be telling him, ‘No, there’s no deal to be had.’”
The most elegant end to a shutdown came at the start of 2018, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave Democrats a debate on border policy after they briefly shut down the government in a bid to get protections for young immigrants. Nothing passed, but Democrats at least got the fig leaf of a debate.
This one might look more like 2019 or 2013, when Democrats refused GOP demands to increase border wall funding or defund Obamacare.
“It’s at the very last minute, with the brinksmanship that we play around here, that people come to the table and say, ‘OK, here’s something we can both live with,’” Beyer said.
Room for Disagreement
Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump projected confidence that he could make the closure of agencies painful enough for Democrats to end the shutdown — in part because he’d trim more public benefits they support.
“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” Trump said on Tuesday. “We get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”
Notable
- Politicians don’t expect a shutdown to move the needle in key state races — even those adjacent to Washington, Semafor reports.
- Unions representing federal employees are suing over the Trump administration’s threats to lay off more workers in the event of a shutdown, Bloomberg News reports.