Democrats
are talking to their voters who are desperate to fight. Republicans rarely
reach beyond their base. And President Donald Trump, supposedly the world’s
greatest dealmaker, is tuned out.
This
Washington stasis explains why no end is in sight to a government shutdown now
tied for the second-longest ahead of Trump’s expected departure for Asia at the
end of the week for summits. There’s no sign he’ll emulate his first
predecessor, President Barack Obama, who canceled a tour of the region in 2013
because of a similar stalemate.
Yet the
costs of the partial closure of federal operations are escalating.
Hundreds
of thousands of government workers are furloughed. The administration has
fired several thousand more.
On Monday, most specialists who oversee the US nuclear stockpile at the
National Nuclear Security Administration got furlough notices.
More air traffic control staffing
shortages were reported over the weekend, in an ominous
foreshadowing of potential travel crunches if the impasse drags on until
Thanksgiving. And time is ticking down to the expiry of critical nutrition support for
42 million Americans next month.
Significant
pain is being inflicted on federal workers who have mortgages and car payments
coming due and on millions of citizens who rely on the government. But it
hasn’t yet reached leaders in both parties in sufficient volume to force them
to seriously negotiate on a reopening. Three weeks in, neither side has moved
beyond the first stage of shutdown politics — blaming the other.
At some point,
Democrats and Republicans will have to change tactics
Democrats
have succeeded in using the shutdown to create a platform for their demands for
Republicans to agree to extendenhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies,
without which millions of policies will shoot up in price at the end of the
year.
“This
is day 20 of the Trump Republican shutdown and the government remains closed
because Republicans have zero interest in actually providing affordable health
care to everyday Americans,” House Democratic Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries
told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “That’s the challenge that the country faces
right now.”
But how
do Democrats turn their success in elevating a key issue into a meaningful
political victory? Republicans aren’t shifting an inch on their refusal to hold
talks on Obamacare subsidies until the government is opened — thereby depriving
Democrats of leverage. And calls by some House progressives for multiyear
extensions of the subsidies before the standoff ends appear rather optimistic.
Centrist
Democratic senators, who might be looking for a way out, saw their position
complicated this weekend by “No Kings”
protests targeting Trump.
They can hardly reach a compromise that looks like caving to the president
after an estimated 7 million people got off their couches on Saturday to blast
him as a wannabe dictator.
But
Democratic attempts to split the usually deal-hungry Trump from Republicans in
Congress have so far failed.
“What’s
the way out of it? Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the
podcast “The Checkup,” according to a transcript released by his office. But
Democrats are proving less successful than Russian President Vladimir
Putin at getting the commander in chief to change his mind.
He’s expected to lunch with GOP senators at his new “Rose Garden Club” terrace
at the White House on Tuesday in a show of GOP unity.
Republicans,
meanwhile, are enjoying their daily media appearances in which they slam
Democrats for closing the government. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday kept
his speechwriters busy finding new superlatives, accusing the opposition of
pulling off the “most selfish, most dangerous political stunt in the history of
the United States Congress.”
But
Johnson is no closer to solving the GOP’s own conundrum. How does the party in
power escape blame for huge hikes in Obamacare premiums if the subsidies
expire? That tough reality explains why Democrats believe Trump, already blamed
for massive Medicaid cuts,
may eventually fold. And Republicans do understand the political threat. At the
weekend, they twinned their willingness to talk about a solution — if the
government reopens — with a call to reshape the 15-year-old health-care
law,even though they’ve never proposed a viable replacement.
“I have
said that I’m absolutely open to having conversation, but we’re not going to
extend a program that is wrought with fraud, waste and abuse,” Alabama Sen.
Katie Britt told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “Our health
care system is broken, the system that they put in place,” she said.
This
will only make Democrats more wary of a deal. Reform of the ACA sounds a lot
like a fresh attempt by the GOP to finally kill a law the party has been trying
to eradicate since it was an idea in the 44th president’s first campaign.
Where is the House?
In the
absence of any serious discussions to end the shutdown, political games are
escalating on Capitol Hill.
Johnson
is keeping the House dark, arguing that his members did their job by voting
last month to temporarily fund the government, apparently ignoring all the
other duties of the people’s representatives. “I refuse to allow us to come
back and engage in anything until the government’s reopened,” the speaker said
Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
One
reason Johnson might not want his members in town is they could spoil his
attempt to stifle dissent after complaints about the shutdown spilled out
from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and
others. He’s also refusing to swear in new Democratic member Adelita
Grijalva, who has pledged the deciding signature to force a vote
on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, until the House fully returns to
Washington.
Democrats
are meanwhile arguing that as terrible as the shutdown is, they are alleviating
even greater misery by fighting to extend health care subsidies. In an odd way,
the extreme realities of life in Trump’s Washington might be mitigating some of
the political duress that usually boils up to end shutdowns. Furloughs of
federal workers don’t seem so extreme after thousands were already fired in
Trump’s federal government purge. And at a turbulent moment when Trump is
trying to send troops into cities and
posting bizarre AI videos, the rituals of a government shutdown seem routine by
comparison.
In a
futile and now-familiar dance unlikely to be noticed much outside the Senate
chamber, Republican Majority Leader John Thune held a vote to pass a stopgap
funding bill to reopen the government Monday evening. But Democrats stood firm
for the 11th time, depriving the measure of the 60 votes needed to break the
filibuster.
Thune
may also bring up a bill this week to pay essential workers required to show up
during the shutdown. The move might put Democrats in a tough spot. But they are
likely to oppose any move that would allow Trump to pick and choose which
workers get salaries. And in a signal that not all Republicans are on board
with their leader’s strategy shift, Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville argued
Tuesday that the bill could alleviate incentives to end the crisis.
Trump
has already announced that his administration has shuffled existing funds to
paying military personnel and FBI officers, two of the few categories of
government workers about whom he seems to care.
His
move lifted one of the usual sources of political heat that usually end up
solving shutdowns. None of the others are working either.
