Republicans are ratcheting up pressure on Democrats on multiple fronts as the government shutdown enters a third workweek, hoping the hardball moves can finally force a reckoning as U.S. troops face a first-ever missed paycheck.
The GOP fear is that if the military pay deadline passes without action, there will be little to stop the shutdown from continuing for several more weeks at least. Some Republicans have privately warned the White House that taking unilateral action to pay servicemembers would deprive the party of a key lever to make Democrats feel overwhelming consequences for their refusal to act on a House-passed spending bill.
As Washington inched closer to the Wednesday pay date, Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue sprang into action: At the White House, budget director Russ Vought announced “substantial” layoffs Friday, finally making good on two weeks of threats.
On Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans said they would no longer allow Democrats to keep calling up their own stopgap spending bill funding the government through the end of October, forcing votes only on the GOP-led alternative. Speaker Mike Johnson is continuing to keep the House out of session this week, and he argues Democrats will bear the consequences of federal workers and troops missing pay.
“It’s a compelling reason to open the damn government,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), adding that “the troop deadline is the issue — if anything becomes an inflection point, it’s that.”
The GOP effort to force Democrats to heel comes as talks between the top four congressional leaders remain virtually nonexistent. And there’s no sign that rank-and-file Senate Democrats — just five of whom could quickly end the shutdown — are ready to flip ahead of another scheduled vote on the House-passed stopgap Tuesday night.
Rather than military pay, Democrats are looking at another day they believe will be the ultimate pressure point: the Nov. 1 launch of open enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance plans. The party has sought to make the pending expiration of premium tax credits a central issue in the standoff, demanding Republicans cut a deal to extend them.
“The closer to Nov. 1, a lot of these elected officials are going to start hearing from their constituents,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) when asked what he thinks will break the impasse.
The fear that the shutdown is pitting the unstoppable force of Democratic anger at President Donald Trump versus the immovable object of GOP resolve not to flinch has not yet generated any substantive bipartisan negotiations.
While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries believe the only way out of the shutdown is for their GOP counterparts and Trump to talk to them, Republicans are making it clear that they don’t see the point right now and are counting on rank-and-file Democrats to pressure their own party brass.
“I think Leader Schumer has checked out,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Friday, adding that Republicans were looking for “bold, courageous Democrats with a backbone.”
In addition to the military pay deadline, lawmakers are keeping a close eye on federal aviation as another potential area that could force Congress into a detente. Thune mentioned the shutdown’s impacts on air travel, saying it was one way senators “might start to feel that a little bit personally.” Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, separately noted last week how air traffic controllers were a driving factor in the last shutdown.
But if the Trump administration thought Friday’s firings of several thousand federal workers would break the impasse, it instead appears to have only stiffened Hill Democrats’ spines to keep the shutdown going.
“We will not be threatened and intimidated by the likes of Russ Vought,” purple-district Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday.
Jeffries is calling House Democrats back to Washington for a Tuesday evening caucus meeting, and Democratic lawmakers are expected to take part in more public appearances this week even as the House stays out of session. He and Schumer have largely managed to keep their caucuses unified on the demand for a bipartisan negotiation — even though there are already clear signs of fissures between the two Democratic leaders over what would be an acceptable end to the shutdown.
“The American people want it, they are seeing how devastating this is, and they are putting a lot of pressure on their Republican congressmen and senators,” Schumer said when asked why he believes Republicans will change their minds on health care, insisting that GOP senators were “feeling the heat.”
Democrats are also trying to drive a wedge between GOP leaders and the White House. Schumer has pointed to Johnson, who is wary of extending the insurance subsidies, as the real roadblock. And Durbin, asked about Thune, noted he had known and worked with the genial South Dakotan for years but “he is at the mercy of a president who is mercurial.”
Republican leaders, however, have shown no signs they will back down from their view that any deal on extending the expiring tax credits can’t be forged while the government is closed down. Instead, they are trying to peel off another five Senate Democrats by dangling an offer to talk once the shutdown is over.
“There are some Democrats who I think are reasonable enough to know that this is not a sustainable position for them,” Thune said.
The bipartisan talks among the Senate rank-and-file are ongoing but have so far failed to bear fruit. Republican leaders floated an offer to potentially hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but Democrats involved in the talks said the details were too fuzzy to agree. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is separately floating a “six-point plan” to Democrats, which would involve a similar commitment on health care plus moving full-year government funding bills.
Even though the group hasn’t yet come up with a deal, aides believe the rapid launching of trial balloons late last week was a good sign. Eventually, they reckon, one of them will take flight and get Congress out of the shutdown.
But the other risk, Republicans are starting to warn, is that the standoff could go on for so long they might need to extend the window for reaching a broader deal on federal spending and the insurance subsidies.
The House-approved bill expires on Nov. 21, just before Thanksgiving. Now some in the GOP are floating dates just before Christmas, and top party leaders are discussing that possibility. Democrats, meanwhile, want a shorter window for action — before the Nov. 1 open enrollment date.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma Republican whom White House officials have tapped to coordinate informal talks with Democrats, said he has floated the later, pre-Christmas deadline in hopes of breaking something loose.
“You start with A, B, C, and you probably end up at D,” Mullin said. “And I think right now we’re probably somewhere around B.”
