Neither Republicans nor Democrats blinked less than 24 hours into a government shutdown as an attempt to pass a government funding extension failed again Wednesday.
Despite Republican leaders signaling confidence that more Democrats would cross the aisle, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus blocked the GOP’s continuing resolution (CR) for the third time with a 53-45 vote.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to bring the same bill to the floor again and again in a bid to crank up pressure on Senate Democrats. The Senate is expected to leave town on Thursday to observe Yom Kippur but will return Friday to continue voting. In order to advance the bill, Thune needs at least 60 votes to smash through the Senate filibuster.
There were glimmers of hope on Tuesday that more Democrats would break ranks and vote for the bill when Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Angus King, I-Maine, joined Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., to vote for the bill.
However, that trio remained the only members of the Democratic caucus that crossed the aisle on Wednesday.
‘We are just one Senate roll call vote away from ending the shutdown,’ Thune said. ‘We need a handful of Democrats to join Republicans to reopen the government. And once we do that, then we can talk about the issues that Democrats are raising. But we’re not going to engage in bipartisan discussions while Democrats are holding the federal government hostage to their partisan demands.’
The GOP’s ranks held, too, save for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, who again voted against the bill.
Schumer and Senate Democrats still appear firmly entrenched in their position that they want an extension to expiring Obamacare tax credits and to be cut into negotiations on the short-term funding bill.
Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote that Democrats weren’t ready to budge and blamed the shutdown on Republicans.
‘Democrats want to avert this crisis, but Republicans tried to bully us, and it’s clear they can’t,’ he said. ‘They don’t have the votes.’
Congressional Republicans and the White House have accused Democrats of shutting the government down in a bid to give illegal immigrants healthcare, a point that Schumer rejected.
‘That is a damn lie,’ he said. ‘Not $1 of Medicare, Medicaid or [Obamacare] is allowed to go to undocumented immigrants, not a dollar. So why do they keep saying this? This seems to be their theme, because they’re afraid to talk about the real issue. It’s a typical Republican response: Have a diversion, try to scare people emotionally.’
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, panned Schumer and Democrats’ blockade as ‘grossly irresponsible.’
‘It reminds me of my 4-year-old granddaughter when she gets mad, when she kicks the sand and leaves the sandbox, and they can’t have their way,’ he said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
Their own counter-proposal was also blocked, again, on Wednesday, which included a permanent extension to the credits, a repeal of the healthcare title in President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ and a clawback of canceled funding for NPR and PBS.
But the crux of their wishlist is focused on the Obamacare tax credits. They do not expire until the end of this year, but Democrats warned that Americans who are enrolled in the healthcare program and rely on the subsidies would see their rates skyrocket by an average of 114% if Congress did not act.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, argued that Democrats’ position was not some ‘sort of cooked-up demand.’
‘The reason that we are trying to take action now on healthcare is because people’s premiums are going up this coming week,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Trump warned ahead of the vote that his administration and the Office of Management and Budget, led by Director Russ Vought, could do things ‘that are irreversible,’ like mass firings and cutting programs favored by Democrats.
Vought and the OMB sent out a memo last week that directed agencies to implement mass firings beyond the typical furloughs that happen during a shutdown. And the Congressional Budget Office projected that about 750,000 employees would be furloughed per day at a cost of roughly $400 million in daily back pay.