The clock keeps ticking toward a September 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown. That’s just four days away, and there’s no sign of a last-minute deal to keep federal agencies open. If anything, the indications that a shutdown will happen are growing stronger by the day.
“The radical left Democrats want to shut it down, and it’s up to them,” President Trump told reporters on Friday in the latest sign that the parties are currently more interested in finger-pointing than deal-making.
In interviews with news outlets, Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested that a shutdown is still “avoidable” but said Democrats would have to “dial back” their demands, which he again dismissed as over the top.
Democrats, under pressure from their voters to stand up to Trump, are pressing for an extension of enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans and are calling for a reversal of Republicans’ recent cuts to Medicaid and other programs as well as restrictions on the president’s ability to claw back congressionally approved funding. Some Republicans are also looking to extend the subsidies, but Thune has indicated that any extension would have to include broader reforms to the program — changes that Democrats would likely oppose.
“I’m a big believer that there’s always a way out,” Thune told the Associated Press on Thursday. “And I think there are off-ramps here, but I don’t think that the negotiating position, at least at the moment, that the Democrats are trying to exert here is going to get you there.”
Thune indicated to The Wall Street Journal that Trump will be the key to any potential deal. “In the end, if the president is interested in weighing in, then I think there’s potentially a path forward here,” he said.
But Trump and his administration have no current plans to negotiate with Democratic leaders and expect a shutdown starting on Wednesday, a senior White House official told Politico. Trump and his allies are gearing up for a fight. They expect to force a series of tough votes and predict that Democrats — and their constituents — will bear the brunt of a shutdown. “We’re going to extract maximum pain,” the White House official told Politico, adding that Democrats “will pay a huge price for this.”
As the deadline nears, Republican leaders are aiming to ramp up the pressure on Democrats. House Republicans left Washington after they passed a stopgap bill to fund the government through November 21. That bill was blocked by Democrats in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed and Republicans have only 53. House GOP leaders already said that they wouldn’t hold any votes until October 1, after the shutdown deadline, but now they reportedly may not bring members back at all next week in an attempt to force Senate Democrats to accept the House-passed plan.
Republicans also feel they have history and political math on their side. “Historically, it’s the aggressor that always loses,” the unnamed White House official was quoted telling Politico. “And quite simply, their constituencies and their priorities are all going to get chewed up, and ours, not so much.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says it is Republicans who will be under pressure to end the shutdown. Schumer predicted in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Trump and congressional Republicans will ultimately feel the heat as the time grows short for a deal to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and prevent huge premium increases for some 22 million Americans.
“There’s going to be pressure on them on that…and Democrats are going to say, very simply, ‘Just come and sit down and talk to us and negotiate agreements, and you can end the shutdown,’” Schumer said. “All we’ve asked is that they sit down, negotiate, and help relieve the pain the Americans are feeling because of their healthcare cuts.”
The bottom line: “There are a number of ways to solve this problem,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said Thursday on CNBC. “But in order to do that we have to talk to each other.” As of now, that’s not happening at the leadership level.