Government Shutdown Looms with No Deal in Sight

On the menu today: Audrey Fahlberg here, National Review’s political reporter helping fill in for Jim Geraghty until he returns to your inboxes on October 10. Let’s dive in.

An Unproductive White House Meeting

Early Monday, there was fleeting hope on Capitol Hill that Democrats and Republicans could find common ground on a shutdown off-ramp during a bipartisan White House meeting between President Trump and the top four congressional leaders.

That hope fizzled as soon as the meeting concluded.

“Significant and meaningful differences remain” between the parties over how to avert a shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) told reporters after the meeting. That closed-door huddle marked his first ever sit down with Trump, who had his own take on the productiveness of the conversation: posting a video of an AI-generated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) complaining about how Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bulls***” while a sombrero-wearing, mariachi band mustache-sporting Jeffries stands beside him.

“If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums,” Schumer shot back in response.

Let’s not forget that Schumer is still feeling the heat from his base after he helped Senate Republicans clear a filibuster on their government-funding bill in March that a united Democratic caucus had already voted against. Six months later, the New York Democrat is treading more carefully, as Punchbowl News reports this morning:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer floated a week-long stopgap funding bill, among other options, to his rank-and-file early on Monday. Unfortunately for Schumer, this became public before he, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune went to the White House for their meeting with President Donald Trump.

Some progressives said this showed Schumer was trying to wriggle out of a shutdown even before it began. It also drew the ire of House Democrats, who privately fretted that their Senate counterpart was laying the groundwork to abandon them again. Schumer’s allies say he was just trying to plan for different contingencies.

Blame Game Kicks Off

So now that we’re barreling toward a government funding lapse that’s set to kick off at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, how are both parties feeling?

“I don’t worry about that,” Trump told Politico in a Monday evening phone interview, “because people that are smart see what’s happening. The Democrats are deranged.”

Republicans are indeed projecting confidence that the American people will blame Democrats for opposing their House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government through November 21. Thune filed cloture on that bill last night in preparation for a Tuesday evening vote.

It’s still of course possible that congressional leaders could negotiate their way out of this stalemate. But as things stand, both parties are preparing for a shutdown, with lawmakers in both parties already filming explanatory videos for their constituents about why the other party is to blame. Meantime, Democrats are continuing to bet it all on health care, even as the Trump administration threatens mass firings in the event of a shutdown. As I reported yesterday:

. . . . The out-of-power party is betting that the American people will blame Republicans for a shutdown given the GOP’s unified control in Washington. Left unmentioned in Democrats’ framing of the negotiations is the reality that they’re demanding a suite of controversial legislative concessions in exchange for their votes.

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that any continuing resolution include a permanent extension of temporary Affordable Care Act subsidies that were expanded in 2021 during the pandemic. (Thune says Republicans are open to negotiating on this front later in the year, but not in a government funding bill.)

Democrats’ current legislative solution is to pass a continuing resolution that’s chock-full of unrelated policy priorities, such as reversing the reconciliation bill’s public broadcast funding cuts and Medicaid reforms. That strategy has prompted Republicans to accuse Democrats of wanting to roll back the Republican-passed legislation’s crackdown on Medicaid rules for illegal immigrants.

Republicans have signaled that they’re open to negotiating on the ACA credits, but only, as Vice President JD Vance explained yesterday, in the “context of an open government.” Democrats are putting their foot down.

“My constituents have to make decisions about whether they’re going to buy health insurance in roughly four weeks, and they need to know whether they’re going to have the subsidies that make that health care insurance affordable. We can’t wait,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said in a brief interview with National Review on Monday evening. “They have to do it by the end of the year. Why not do it now?”

This strategy could backfire, as National Review’s editors explain:

Given that they will almost certainly have to cave and agree to fund the government eventually, all their tough talk now will only reinforce the sense of disillusionment among their base when that moment inevitably comes.

Additionally, while they are claiming to be frustrated with Trump’s efforts to eliminate agencies that he doesn’t like, a government shutdown fight would give him clearer discretionary power. Already, in a savvy preemptive move by Trump, the White House Office of Management and Budget has instructed agencies to prepare for mass layoffs of federal workers in the case of any shutdown.

The only Senate Democrat who publicly acknowledges this reality is John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who believes his party’s leaders are seriously miscalculating in their shutdown strategy:

ADDENDUM: Representative Richard Neal, the ranking Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, gave a newsworthy quote to Politico yesterday on his openness to potential income caps for ACA subsidies: “I think the question of subsidies for people that are making half a million dollars — I mean, that should be subject to a discussion and negotiation as well, but that shouldn’t become the pretense for shutting down the government.” Expect more movement on this mini news cycle in the coming days.