Lawmakers say only Trump can avert government shutdown

Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill say Washington is headed for a government shutdown next week unless President Trump intervenes to cut a deal with Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said repeatedly he does not want to sit down with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) to negotiate a deal to keep the government open past Sept. 30, repeatedly telling reporters he wants the stopgap funding measure to move by “regular order.”

Under the Senate rules, that means 60 votes will be required to move the measure under regular order, and Democratic votes will be needed.

Senate Democrats on Friday voted overwhelmingly to defeat the House-passed measure, which given GOP absences failed to win even a simple majority on the floor. Centrist Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) was the only Democrat to vote for it.

Democrats say now it’s time for Thune to negotiate after it’s clear he doesn’t have the 60 votes to pass the seven-week funding measure passed by the House.

But Republican sources familiar with the Senate’s internal dynamics say that Thune doesn’t want to begin negotiating with Schumer until he’s clear what Trump is willing to accept, and Trump himself has yet to give the GOP leader clear guidance about what he would sign into law.

Thune says the White House needs to weigh in before any deal is reached and explained that while his staff has been in contact with White House staff, he has yet to speak directly to Trump on the matter.

Democrats are demanding the government funding stopgap extend the enhanced health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that are due to expire at the end of the year.

Thune said Republicans are discussing that issue but aren’t close to a consensus on what needs to be done.

“It’s another subject that we’ve had a number of discussions about and the House has too. The White House obviously is going to have to be involved in that conversation at some point,” Thune said.

The GOP leader said Trump “hasn’t directly” weighed in on the issue but revealed there’s “been conversations with his staff.”

Thune may be trying to avoid a repeat of what happened in late July and early August, when he tried to negotiate a deal with Schumer to speed up the confirmation of more than 140 stalled executive branch nominees that Democrats had slow-walked through the Senate.

After days of negotiations, Trump blew up the emerging deal when it was presented to him, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

One Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on Thune’s relationship with Trump said the GOP leader wants to be careful of not getting too far in front of the president in any negotiation with Schumer.

The lawmaker said the impasse between Thune and Schumer over the looming expiration of the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies is “solvable” but not without Trump giving GOP leaders on Capitol Hill the green light.

The senator said Republicans even talked about extending the subsidies during the negotiation over the budget reconciliation package that enacted much of Trump’s agenda and passed earlier this year.

The lawmaker said it was left out in part because GOP lawmakers thought there would be bipartisan support for extending the subsidies at a later date.

“That’s what makes it politically charged, it’s part of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare. But there’s a lot of interest on the Republican side in fixing it,” the senator said.

“I certainly would expect that Sen. Thune has inquired” with the White House over how to handle the impending expiration of the subsidies.

Lawmakers in both parties predict that there’s not likely to be any resolution to the government funding stalemate in Congress until Trump himself begins to focus on the logjam and help negotiate a deal.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said Trump is the biggest obstacle to getting a deal.

“Trump has said he’s told Republicans not to negotiate. Makes no sense, obviously. We’ve got to negotiate,” he said.

He said Trump’s refusal to negotiate is “a bad setup for a good outcome” but noted “we do have time” since government funding doesn’t expire until the end of the month.

“We want to keep the lights on so we want to negotiate. We can’t negotiate with ourselves so I hope the president is going to encourage a good negotiation and good outcome for the American people,” he said.

Instead, Trump seems to be bracing for the likelihood of a shutdown and sounded pessimistic about the prospects of reaching a deal after the House-passed government funding bill failed in the Senate on Friday.

“We’ll continue to talk to the Democrats, but I think you could very well end up with a closed country for a period of time,” Trump said. “And we’ll take care of the military. We’ll take care of Social Security. We’ll take care of the things we have to take care of.

“A lot of the things Democrats fight for … will not be able to be paid,” Trump added. “So we’ll watch and see how we do with that,” he added.

Trump may be holding back because he thinks that Democrats will eventually cave, like they did in March, when Schumer and nine other members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for a partisan House-passed six-month funding measure.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said Democrats are “bluffing” and Trump shouldn’t negotiate.

“Shutting down government is something [Democrats] don’t want to do but Schumer’s going to make a big show of it,” he said.

But Democrats insist this time is very different from March.

“I don’t think they should count on getting the votes they got last time,” said Sen. Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. He voted for the Republican continuing resolution in March but voted against the seven-week House-passed funding stopgap on Friday.