Democrats are talking to their voters who are desperate to fight. Republicans rarely reach beyond their base. And President Donald Trump, supposedly the world’s greatest dealmaker, is tuned out.
This Washington stasis explains why no end is in sight to a government shutdown now tied for the second-longest ahead of Trump’s expected departure for Asia at the end of the week for summits. There’s no sign he’ll emulate his first predecessor, President Barack Obama, who canceled a tour of the region in 2013 because of a similar stalemate.
Yet the costs of the partial closure of federal operations are escalating.
Hundreds of thousands of government workers are furloughed. The administration has fired several thousand more. On Monday, most specialists who oversee the US nuclear stockpile at the National Nuclear Security Administration got furlough notices. More air traffic control staffing shortages were reported over the weekend, in an ominous foreshadowing of potential travel crunches if the impasse drags on until Thanksgiving. And time is ticking down to the expiry of critical nutrition support for 42 million Americans next month.
Significant pain is being inflicted on federal workers who have mortgages and car payments coming due and on millions of citizens who rely on the government. But it hasn’t yet reached leaders in both parties in sufficient volume to force them to seriously negotiate on a reopening. Three weeks in, neither side has moved beyond the first stage of shutdown politics — blaming the other.
At some point, Democrats and Republicans will have to change tactics
Democrats have succeeded in using the shutdown to create a platform for their demands for Republicans to agree to extendenhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, without which millions of policies will shoot up in price at the end of the year.
“This is day 20 of the Trump Republican shutdown and the government remains closed because Republicans have zero interest in actually providing affordable health care to everyday Americans,” House Democratic Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “That’s the challenge that the country faces right now.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries during a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on October 16. – Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images
But how do Democrats turn their success in elevating a key issue into a meaningful political victory? Republicans aren’t shifting an inch on their refusal to hold talks on Obamacare subsidies until the government is opened — thereby depriving Democrats of leverage. And calls by some House progressives for multiyear extensions of the subsidies before the standoff ends appear rather optimistic.
Centrist Democratic senators, who might be looking for a way out, saw their position complicated this weekend by “No Kings” protests targeting Trump. They can hardly reach a compromise that looks like caving to the president after an estimated 7 million people got off their couches on Saturday to blast him as a wannabe dictator.
But Democratic attempts to split the usually deal-hungry Trump from Republicans in Congress have so far failed.
“What’s the way out of it? Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the podcast “The Checkup,” according to a transcript released by his office. But Democrats are proving less successful than Russian President Vladimir Putin at getting the commander in chief to change his mind. He’s expected to lunch with GOP senators at his new “Rose Garden Club” terrace at the White House on Tuesday in a show of GOP unity.
Republicans, meanwhile, are enjoying their daily media appearances in which they slam Democrats for closing the government. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday kept his speechwriters busy finding new superlatives, accusing the opposition of pulling off the “most selfish, most dangerous political stunt in the history of the United States Congress.”
But Johnson is no closer to solving the GOP’s own conundrum. How does the party in power escape blame for huge hikes in Obamacare premiums if the subsidies expire? That tough reality explains why Democrats believe Trump, already blamed for massive Medicaid cuts, may eventually fold. And Republicans do understand the political threat. At the weekend, they twinned their willingness to talk about a solution — if the government reopens — with a call to reshape the 15-year-old health-care law,even though they’ve never proposed a viable replacement.
“I have said that I’m absolutely open to having conversation, but we’re not going to extend a program that is wrought with fraud, waste and abuse,” Alabama Sen. Katie Britt told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “Our health care system is broken, the system that they put in place,” she said.
This will only make Democrats more wary of a deal. Reform of the ACA sounds a lot like a fresh attempt by the GOP to finally kill a law the party has been trying to eradicate since it was an idea in the 44th president’s first campaign.
Republican representatives stand behind House Speaker Mike Johnson during a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Monday. – Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Where is the House?
In the absence of any serious discussions to end the shutdown, political games are escalating on Capitol Hill.
Johnson is keeping the House dark, arguing that his members did their job by voting last month to temporarily fund the government, apparently ignoring all the other duties of the people’s representatives. “I refuse to allow us to come back and engage in anything until the government’s reopened,” the speaker said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
One reason Johnson might not want his members in town is they could spoil his attempt to stifle dissent after complaints about the shutdown spilled out from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. He’s also refusing to swear in new Democratic member Adelita Grijalva, who has pledged the deciding signature to force a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, until the House fully returns to Washington.
Democrats are meanwhile arguing that as terrible as the shutdown is, they are alleviating even greater misery by fighting to extend health care subsidies. In an odd way, the extreme realities of life in Trump’s Washington might be mitigating some of the political duress that usually boils up to end shutdowns. Furloughs of federal workers don’t seem so extreme after thousands were already fired in Trump’s federal government purge. And at a turbulent moment when Trump is trying to send troops into cities and posting bizarre AI videos, the rituals of a government shutdown seem routine by comparison.
In a futile and now-familiar dance unlikely to be noticed much outside the Senate chamber, Republican Majority Leader John Thune held a vote to pass a stopgap funding bill to reopen the government Monday evening. But Democrats stood firm for the 11th time, depriving the measure of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.
Thune may also bring up a bill this week to pay essential workers required to show up during the shutdown. The move might put Democrats in a tough spot. But they are likely to oppose any move that would allow Trump to pick and choose which workers get salaries. And in a signal that not all Republicans are on board with their leader’s strategy shift, Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville argued Tuesday that the bill could alleviate incentives to end the crisis.
Trump has already announced that his administration has shuffled existing funds to paying military personnel and FBI officers, two of the few categories of government workers about whom he seems to care.
His move lifted one of the usual sources of political heat that usually end up solving shutdowns. None of the others are working either.
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