Washington is entering the fourth week of the federal government shutdown with no tangible sign that it will end in the near future.
Senate Democrats are determined to insist that any government funding bill would include an extension of expiring tax credits to offset rapidly rising health insurance costs. Republicans still refuse to negotiate as long as the government remains closed. President Donald Trump and his administration have sought to maximize the impact on Democratic lawmakers.
“We’re in a total holding pattern,” says West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a member of the GOP Senate leadership.
Why we wrote this
Republicans and Democrats are not negotiating to end the weeks-long government shutdown because its effects are being felt more widely. However, certain pressure points are emerging on both sides.
Monday marks the 20th day of the closure. The second longest in US history lasted 21 days.
The longest stretch on record lasted 35 days in late 2018 and early 2019, sparked by President Trump’s demands to include money in a funding bill to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Lawmakers on both sides are openly speculating that this shutdown could last even longer.
Mr. Trump agreed to reopen the government in 2019, amid falling poll numbers. Republicans abandoned their 2013 attempt to force repeal of an affordable care law with a 16-day shutdown for similar reasons. The House Republican shutdown of the mid-1990s, which is about to be eclipsed by this one, also ended when public opinion turned against Republicans.
But right now, neither side feels like they are losing this political fight. A recent Associated Press-NORC poll found that 58% of Americans blame President Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, and 54% blame Democrats.
There has also been virtually no movement on the question of which party voters plan to support in next year’s midterm elections. On Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown, Democrats led by 3 percentage points in an average of polls asking people which party they planned to vote for. They hold the same lead today.
Democrats have felt a lot more pressure from their base to do something, anything, to stand up to the Trump administration as this shutdown approaches. That hasn’t changed.
Previous federal shutdowns have made headlines. But that was sidelined by other major news, including President Trump’s immigration crackdown, his attempt to deploy National Guard members in some U.S. cities and the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
With both sides entrenched and this shutdown resulting in less media coverage than previous ones, it remains an open question what real events may erupt and force either side to the negotiating table.
The longer the shutdowns continue, the more painful they become for everyone, as the parts of government that had been able to move the money run out of backup resources. Sen. Capito says that could soon happen with programs like Head Start, which provides services to low-income children and families.
Open enrollment to buy private health insurance begins November 1, and letters to Americans informing them of the premium increases are being rolled out. Democrats say that as more people receive information that their health care premiums will skyrocket next year, it will make the problem worse.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on this place once open enrollment starts, and people come to terms with the fact that they could go bankrupt because of these insurance increases,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told the Monitor.
If subsidies put in place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are not extended, the average individual premium payment will more than double, from $888 to $1,904 per year, according to the nonpartisan KFF. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will lose their health insurance if these subsidies are not extended.
The national election results in Virginia and New Jersey in early November provide another moment where shutdown politics could force either party to reconsider their positions. These states’ gubernatorial elections are key off-year indicators, and if one side performs much worse than expected, it could change their thinking.
Failing that, staffing issues at airports are leading to longer and longer delays, making the Thanksgiving holiday — one of the busiest travel times of the year — another potential inflection point.
The Trump administration appears determined to maximize the lockdown’s damage to Democratic voters — and lawmakers — and minimize it to Republicans.
“Democrats are getting killed in the shutdown because we’re ending Democratic programs that we opposed…and they’re never coming back in many cases,” Mr. Trump said last week.
The administration has already halted infrastructure projects in Democratic districts and states, while pledging to lay off up to 10,000 federal workers it considers Democratic-leaning. A federal judge last week ordered a temporary halt to at least some of the layoffs.
On Friday, in the latest round of budget cuts, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced that the Army Corps of Engineers would “immediately suspend more than $11 billion in lower-priority projects and consider canceling them, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore” — all heavily Democratic cities. The same day, the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency that helps the Pentagon maintain and secure the U.S. nuclear arsenal — announced it would furlough nearly 80 percent of its 1,800 employees and contractors starting this week.
However, US military personnel on active duty appear to have been spared, at least for the moment. The Trump administration sees them as natural allies. After public criticism from service members and their families over likely missed paychecks, President Trump unilaterally declared they would be paid on time on October 15, even as other federal workers went without pay. The move sparked questions about its legality from across the aisle.
But these measures did not change the atmosphere of Groundhog Day at the Capitol.
The House hasn’t been in session since Sept. 19, when Republicans passed a bill to keep the government open at current levels until mid-November and then left town for a month. While Republican Speaker Mike Johnson kept the House on recess again this week, he has now canceled more than a quarter of the days the House was scheduled to be in session this year, since GOP leaders released their planned schedule.
A small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers pushed for a one-year extension of current health care subsidies, but congressional leaders on both sides rejected the proposal.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly guaranteed Democrats a vote on a bill to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies if they relent and reopen the government.
“I will not negotiate in hostage conditions and I will not pay ransom,” he said on the social platform X on Friday.
But Democrats have rejected what they describe as a sham vote that would go nowhere in the House, where GOP leaders have refused to promise a vote even if an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies were to pass the Senate.
“We want a deal that actually delivers health care for the American people,” said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, blaming the length of the shutdown on Republicans who “won’t come to the table to negotiate.”
Sen. Capito blames what she describes as a “march of misery” on Democrats who see “political advantage” in the shutdown — and want to “do everything they can to oust the president.”
