Government shutdown drags on as senators fail to find path out

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Senate Democrats resisted ending the record-long government shutdown on Thursday.
• The shutdown has affected 750,000 federal employees and disrupted food assistance programs.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune needs eight Democrats to break ranks for to pass a continuing resolution.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats continued to hold out on agreeing to end the record-long federal government shutdown on Thursday, despite Republican overtures to reverse federal employee layoffs as part of a bid to reopen shuttered agencies.

Democrats spent nearly two hours in their second closed-door caucus meeting in as many days on the 37th day of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which has furloughed about 750,000 federal employees, forced thousands more to work without pay and shut off food assistance and Head Start subsidies for millions of Americans, including children. A new pressure point was expected to open in the days ahead as major airports braced for a 10% cut in airline flights due to a lack of pay for air traffic controllers.

After 14 failed votes on a short-term funding measure, the Senate is expected to vote again on Friday, but this time with the understanding that the bill would be amended in coming days to include bipartisan legislation to reopen federal agencies and fund some programs for the full year.

"My hopes and expectations are always that we're going to have enough Democrats to actually proceed," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, told reporters. "We'll see. They seem to be walking back or slow-walking this."

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority but need 60 votes to reopen the government. With one Republican opposed to short-term funding, Thune would need at least eight Democrats to break with their party. Up until now, only two Democrats and an independent who caucuses with them have been willing to do so.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York described his caucus' meeting as "a very good, productive meeting." Others struck similarly upbeat tones.

But some Democrats were less sanguine. "I don't know how productive it was in there," said Sen. John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, one of only three members of the Senate Democratic Conference to support a short-term bill to reopen the government.

Republicans said they offered Democrats a path to reopening the government that included a short-term stopgap funding measure and a package of full-year appropriations bills to pay for agriculture programs including food assistance, military construction, veterans affairs and the legislative branch.

Possible reversal of layoffs

In bipartisan talks, Republicans have also shown an openness to reversing some of the mass federal workforce layoffs ordered by President Donald Trump's White House and protecting federal jobs from future cuts.

"The discussion was a health care discussion, and in the last few days, it's also become a discussion about what I've been calling the moratorium on mischief," Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, of Virginia, told reporters.

Democrats demand that Republicans agree to negotiate an extension of federal health care subsidies before reopening the government. Republicans say the government must reopen first.

"We have to make sure we have a deal that we can get broad support for," said Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, of Michigan, who has been involved in bipartisan talks. "There are a lot of things that have been kicked around as part of the deal. Nothing's really crystallized."

House moves uncertain

As an incentive to reopening the government, Thune has offered to give Democrats a Senate floor vote to extend expiring federal tax credits that help lower-income Americans pay for private health insurance. There was no such guarantee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives .

"I'm not part of the negotiation," House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told reporters. "I'm not promising anybody anything."

Asked about that remark, Peters replied: "That's a significant problem."

Democrats have repeatedly called on Trump to begin negotiations on health care, a prospect that Republicans say should come only after the government reopens.

But Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said the White House could intervene with House Republican leaders to guarantee a House vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits, should legislation pass the Senate.

"That's a legitimate task for the White House to take on," said Tillis, of North Carolina. "They can at least signal that if you all get out of this, then we will allow a vote."

If Senate Democrats and Republicans managed to reach a deal to reopen the government this week, agencies would still likely remain shuttered for days. Such a measure would require approval from the House before Trump could sign it into law.

House Republican leaders, who have kept the chamber out of session since before the shutdown began, have pledged to give members 48 hours' notice before calling them back to Washington and 72 hours to review legislation before holding any votes.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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