Hours Before Shutdown Deadline, There Is No Deal in Sight

With just hours left before a midnight government shutdown deadline, Republicans and Democrats are nowhere near an agreement in the Senate.

“We are only hours away from a government shutdown, and the Democrats have a very clear, binary choice,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters at a Tuesday press conference. 

Republicans will soon bring to the floor a seven-week stopgap funding bill to extend current spending and buy time for the bill-by-bill appropriations process. But Democrats, who repeatedly voted for almost the exact same spending levels under President Joe Biden, are complaining that they haven’t had their demands heard.

“What we’ve seen in particular in this instance is essentially no involvement from the get-go, no markups, no discussion, no anything. It was just driven to the floor—boom,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told The Daily Signal.

But Republicans beg to differ, with Thune arguing that Democrats are only voting against the continuing resolution as an attack on President Donald Trump.

“What’s changed is President Trump is in the White House,” Thune told reporters after noting the numerous times Democrats had supported extending Biden-era funding in the past. “This is something that has been done routinely. As I said, 13 different times when the Democrats had the majority. But we are not going to be held hostage.”

Republicans will need at least seven Democrat caucus votes in the Senate in order to bring their bill to the floor. Yesterday, Democrat leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., emerged from their meeting with Trump and their Republican counterparts no closer to an agreement.

Ahead of the funding vote, Democrats have made a whole host of demands: undoing recently passed cost-saving Medicaid reforms, hamstringing the White House’s ability to rescind certain federal funding, and extending expiring Obamacare health care premium tax credits, which were enhanced during the previous administration.

Republicans, arguing that there’s no reason to acquiesce to Democrat demands simply to pass a short-term stopgap funding bill, have rejected the idea of making a deal.

“We shouldn’t have any negotiations—only when the government is open. So I’m not for that at all,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told reporters Tuesday when asked if he would rule out negotiating the expiring tax credits with Democrats.

Thune similarly drew a line in the sand, refusing to entertain the idea of buying Democrats’ votes with a deal.

“There isn’t anything here to negotiate. This is a routine funding resolution to keep the government open so that we can continue our appropriations work and fund the government in the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Thus, it appears Democrats will be presented with a binary choice—allow the funding extension to be considered on the floor or send the nation into a government shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

When Schumer spoke to reporters Tuesday, he made no indication he would be persuaded to vote for the funding bill without major concessions.

“I think we believe that this is an issue worth fighting for,” Schumer said as he laid out his health care demands. “We hope the Republicans avoid the shutdown, but if they do it, it’s because they didn’t even negotiate with us until the last minute.”

But if Schumer and his fellow Democrats do not provide the necessary votes to pass the funding bill, Republicans seem content to keep forcing vote after vote until they crack.

“We’re going to continue to vote on the clean CR that was sent to us from the House,” Whip Barrasso told reporters, before replying in the affirmative when asked if they would re-vote if necessary.

He added that “there are not going to be votes between sundown tomorrow and sundown Thursday” due to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

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