Washington is entering the fourth week of a federal government shutdown with no tangible signs it will end anytime soon.
Senate Democrats are dug in, insisting that any government funding bill include an extension of expiring tax credits to offset fast-rising health insurance costs. Republicans are still refusing to negotiate while the government remains shut. President Donald Trump and his administration have sought to maximize the sting for Democratic lawmakers.
“We’re in a total holding pattern,” says West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a member of the Senate GOP leadership.
Why We Wrote This
Republicans and Democrats aren’t negotiating to end the weekslong government shutdown, as its effects are felt more widely. Some pressure points for each side are looming, however.
Monday marks Day 20 of the shutdown. The second-longest in U.S history lasted 21 days.
The longest-ever stretched 35 days in late 2018 and early 2019, triggered 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 of the aisle are openly speculating that this shutdown might last even longer than that.
Mr. Trump agreed to reopen the government in 2019 amid tumbling poll numbers. Republicans gave up on their 2013 attempt to force an Affordable Care Act repeal through a shutdown after 16 days for similar reasons. The mid-1990s House GOP shutdown, which is about to be eclipsed in length by this one, also ended when public sentiment turned against Republicans.
But right now, neither side feels like it’s 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.
Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/AP
There has also been almost 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 plan to vote for. They hold the same lead today.
Democrats felt far more pressure from their base to do something, anything, to stand up to the Trump administration heading into this shutdown. That hasn’t changed.
Previous federal shutdowns dominated headlines. But this one has been pushed aside by other major news, including President Trump’s immigration crackdown, his attempt to deploy National Guard members to some U.S. cities, and the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza.
With both sides dug in and this shutdown driving less press coverage than previous ones, it’s an open question what real-life events can break through and force one side or the other to the negotiating table.
The longer shutdowns drag on, the more painful they become for everyone, as parts of the government that had been able to shift around money run out of backup resources. Senator Capito says that may soon happen with programs including Head Start, which offers services to low-income children and families.
Open enrollment to sign up for private health insurance begins Nov. 1, and letters to Americans informing them of premium increases are rolling out now. Democrats say that as more people receive notices that their health care premiums will skyrocket next year, that will force the issue.
“The pressure is going to be very acute on this place once open enrollment starts, and people come to terms with the fact that they may go bankrupt over these insurance increases,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut tells the Monitor.
If subsidies that were enacted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are not extended, average individual premium payments will more than double from $888 to $1,904 annually, according to nonpartisan KFF. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will lose health insurance if those subsidies aren’t extended.
Results from statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey in early November are another moment when the politics of the shutdown could force one party or the other to reconsider its stances. Those states’ gubernatorial elections are key off-year bellwethers, and if one side does much worse than expected, that could shift its thinking.
Barring that, problems with staffing at airports are leading to longer and longer delays, making the Thanksgiving holiday – one of the busiest travel periods of the year – another potential inflection point.
The Trump administration seems intent on maximizing the damage of the shutdown for Democratic voters – and lawmakers – and on minimizing it for Republicans.
“The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to … and they’re never going to come back in many cases,” Mr. Trump said last week.
The administration has already halted infrastructure projects in Democratic districts and states, while pledging to fire as many as 10,000 federal workers whom it views as 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 cuts, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced that the Army Corps of Engineers will be “immediately pausing over $11 billion in lower-priority projects & considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore” – all heavily Democratic cities. That same day, the National Nuclear Security Administration – the agency that helps the Pentagon with the maintenance and security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal – announced that it would furlough nearly 80% of its 1,800 staff members and contractors starting this week.
Active-duty U.S. military appear to have been spared, however, at least for now. 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 Oct. 15, even as other federal workers go without their salaries. That decision has drawn questions about its legality from across the aisle.
But those moves haven’t shifted the Groundhog Day feeling on Capitol Hill.
The House hasn’t been in session since Sept. 19, when Republicans passed a bill to keep the government open at current levels through mid-November and then left town for a month. With Republican Speaker Mike Johnson keeping the House in 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 calendar.
A small bipartisan group of House lawmakers has been pushing for a one-year extension of the current health care subsidies, but congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have dismissed the proposal.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly floated guaranteeing Democrats a vote on a bill to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies if they first relented and reopened the government.
“I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom,” he posted to the social platform X on Friday.
But Democrats have rejected what they describe as a show 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 produces health care for American people,” says Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, blaming the shutdown’s length on Republicans who “won’t come to the table to negotiate.”
Senator Capito blames what she describes as a “misery march” on Democrats who see “political advantage” in the shutdown – and want to “do whatever they can to take the president down.”
