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Donald Trump has kept the Senate’s infamous bipartisan gangs in check. The shutdown could change all that.
With agency closures stretching to a week, Democrats anticipate that the GOP rank-and-file will become more willing to negotiate an extension of expiring ACA subsidies that would help end the shutdown. But at the moment, interested Republicans won’t start talking unless Democrats vote for the House’s spending bill, something most have declined to do five times and counting.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a frequent bipartisan dealmaker who has endured several shutdowns, predicted that the dynamic could shift on Friday, when federal employees are set to miss pay, and get even more intense on Oct. 15 when the military would miss a check.
“A couple more days of this, and you’ll have a group of senators at least trying,” Coons told Semafor. For senators “it only gets ugly once people start missing their paychecks,” he said.
Republicans do not have “a sustainable position,” Coons added. “I don’t know about their states. I got thousands of people who work at Dover Air Force Base who are going to be pissed and calling me.”
It’s easy to see where a bipartisan gang might help with the current situation: Senate Majority Leader John Thune has stretched his majority powers to their limits, using 50 votes to raise the debt ceiling, cut taxes, and confirm Trump’s nominees. A government shutdown is different, requiring 60 votes to clear a filibuster.
And Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer aren’t talking.
But recruitment to a deal-cutting group in the current Senate will prove a little more challenging. Past aisle-crossing senators like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Rob Portman, and Roy Blunt have retired, and it’s been more than a year since the last Senate gang came together.
That doesn’t mean some Republicans aren’t prepared to try, especially if more of them concede Democrats will need something tangible to vote for the House’s funding plan.
“For the Democrats to switch their vote — which is what it will take to get it open — you have to have some germ of an idea as to where we go once we get it open,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a gang veteran, told Semafor. “It doesn’t have to be clearly defined, but you’ve got to have a sense we know where we’re headed.”
Murkowski said senators are talking to each other, but “I don’t know that we have gangs identified.”
Senators in both parties took a stab at a border security deal last year, only to watch Trump torpedo it. The Hill has been a gang-free zone ever since.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is retiring next year, has built up goodwill with the GOP by helping advance some of Trump’s nominees. She’s now trying to put together a negotiating crew. It hasn’t quite come together yet.
“It’s going to take some discussions,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, one of four congressional Democratic caucus members who has voted for the House’s stopgap solution. “I’m frustrated by the failure of the Republicans to even commit to reasonable discussions on the ACA issue. I think we can have a proposal to solve it in short order.”
There are scant GOP partners right now for Democrats. Trump, Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are maintaining a unified front and refusing to negotiate.
Even so, Republicans simply might have no alternative.
Some of them say the Senate can return to its previous gang life — once the government reopens. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said “right now, I don’t think it’s a worthwhile effort. And I’m the guy that’s always trying to come up with a compromise.”
“If you want to talk about lowering premiums, keeping them lower, or getting them lower, speaking just for myself. I’m happy to talk to anybody,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
“We have to address that issue. I would just urge them on the government shutdown, though: End this.”
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The Senate’s gangs passed new laws on pandemic relief, infrastructure and gun safety. Typically such a deal would mean an equal group of Democrats and Republicans agreeing to break an impasse. In this case, that would probably mean funding the government and extending subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end and send health care premiums skyward.
“You’ve got to have a significant group of both caucuses saying: ‘I’m willing to stand behind this offer,’ and then I’m willing to vote for that,” Coons said.
One of the most well-known gangs, informally dubbed the “talking stick” group, helped end a brief 2018 shutdown. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said her ceremonial stick is “at the ready” this time too — if Democrats “see the light.
“It’s got to be an agreement to open up the government. I think there could be a commitment to discuss the ACA premium tax credits,” Collins said.
Democrats say they need more than that after watching the Trump administration unravel some past spending accords.
“I’m not gonna trust Lucy again when I’m trying to kick the football,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. “From what I know right now, from how these guys have acted since I’ve gotten to the Senate, their assurances are meaningless.”
Room for Disagreement
Quite a few Republicans think Democrats’ position is much more about intraparty politics than it is about achieving policy goals.
They see the shutdown as a way to satisfy liberal activists who want Democrats to fight Trump — and they argue the ACA subsidies are an unrealistic demand undergirding that mentality.
“They’re in a tea party moment that we were in 15 years ago … they all know if they break ranks just a little bit, they’re going to get lit up from the base,” said Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont. “The rank-and-file moderate Dems just aren’t engaged on this.”
Burgess’s view
Thune and Schumer can only keep their members in line for so long in a shutdown. It simply gets too painful to stay dug in indefinitely. Already there are airport staffing problems. Government workers and the military are all about to start missing paychecks.
A bipartisan group just talking could be enough for senators to come out of their corners and reopen the government, giving leaders some distance from an eventual solution that will almost certainly involve concessions from both parties.
The question for senators is, after years of past gang leaders facing blowback from their respective bases: Are any of them ready to fill the chamber’s current void in the ideological middle?
Notable
- Airport delays expanded into their second day on Tuesday, NBC reports.
- Economists see a major pivot point on the military pay date of Oct. 15, according to CNBC.
Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.