On the menu today: Audrey Fahlberg here again, National Review’s political reporter helping fill in for Jim Geraghty until he returns to your inboxes on October 10. I’ll be passing the Morning Jolt torch to Dominic Pino tomorrow.
This evening, Senate Republicans will bring the GOP’s House-passed continuing resolution to the floor for another vote. Only three members of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democratic caucus have bucked the party line so far: John Fetterman (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), and Angus King (I., Maine).
“Right now, we’re at a stalemate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, adding: “They’ll get another chance on Monday to vote again, and I’m hoping that some of them have a change of heart.”
Day Six and Counting
Washington looks poised to enter its second week of closed government as Democrats continue to oppose the clean House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government through November 21. Right now, there are no indications that either side plans to fold anytime soon.
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries continue to demand that, in exchange for their votes, Republicans negotiate a deal to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats passed these enhanced premium tax credits in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan and extended them through 2025 in their sprawling climate and infrastructure bill passed in 2022.
Republican congressional leaders and White House officials have repeatedly said that they’re open to negotiating on a deal to extend the subsidies in some form but not in the context of a closed government. “We want to fix it so it works,” President Trump told reporters on Sunday when asked whether he’s open to extending the subsidies. “Obamacare has been a disaster for the people. So we want to have it fixed.”
Republicans are confident that the American people will blame Democrats for the shutdown. They continue to remind voters about what happened in March, when Schumer helped Senate Republicans clear a filibuster on a stopgap funding bill in fear that Democrats would be blamed for a shutdown, a move that infuriated his base. “Chuck Schumer is afraid that the Marxist far-left corner of his base is going to challenge him in New York,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday.
Here’s Politico with an inside look at Republicans’ messaging strategy:
Most federal workers will miss their first paychecks Friday if agencies don’t reopen by then. Active-duty military members will miss their pay the following Wednesday if Congress does not act.
Speaking to House Republicans on a private conference call Saturday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise identified that latter date as a key pressure point and urged members to hammer Democrats as it approached. . . .
Trump and his deputies are seeking to add to the pressure by threatening to proceed with mass layoffs of federal employees as the shutdown wears on. Top economic adviser Kevin Hassett described potential firings Sunday as a sort of Sword of Damocles that will hang over Democrats in the coming days.
“We think that the Democrats, there’s a chance that they’ll be reasonable once they get back into town on Monday,” he said on CNN. “And if they are, I think there’s no reason for those layoffs.”
But the layoff threats have only caused Democrats to dig in more. Many inside their ranks are calling the spectre of firings a bluff, arguing Trump has no more legal authority to carry out such firings in a shutdown than he would otherwise and that any such moves would be quickly challenged in court.
Republicans are indeed split on whether the GOP should strike a deal with Democrats on Obamacare subsidies. Fiscal hawks hope that the GOP will let the pandemic-era subsidies expire at the end of the year, arguing that they were meant to be temporary and that the program is rife with fraud. And as NR reported last week, pro-life groups and Republicans have expressed concern that a GOP-negotiated deal to extend them would put Republican fingerprints on insurance plans that cover abortions.
“Obamacare represented a substantial departure from the Hyde Amendment’s prohibition on taxpayer funding of elective abortion,” Senator Steve Daines (R., Mont.) wrote in a fact sheet on “Covid Obamacare Expansion” considerations. “The law expressly permits subsidies for health insurance plans that cover elective abortion. While the abortion coverage itself must be funded by separate surcharges (Section 1303 of the law), taxpayer dollars nonetheless facilitate abortion coverage because the taxpayer funds are fungible and make it easier for plans covering abortion to offer those services.”
But behind closed doors, moderates and other Republican lawmakers with large Affordable Care Act beneficiary populations are expressing concern that they’ll face political blowback during the midterms if they don’t act soon to extend the subsidies, preferably before open enrollment begins on November 1. As I reported on Friday, Republicans are discussing ending automatic reenrollment in plans and implementing income caps, among other possible changes.
A Washington Post editorial over the weekend characterized the problem this way:
The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable. President Barack Obama’s signature achievement allowed people to buy insurance on marketplaces with subsidies based on their income. The architects of the program assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.
Meantime, expect the sombrero memes to continue.
Jay Jones Maintains Democratic Party’s Support Following NR Report
On Friday, I scooped that in 2022, Virginia attorney general nominee Jay Jones sent disturbing texts to a Republican state legislator in which he fantasized about shooting then–Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert and expressed his desire that Gilbert’s wife could watch her child die in her own arms so that the Republican lawmaker might change his political views. Since my report, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both called on Jones to drop out of the race.
Democrats are continuing to stand behind Jones.
It’s now been three days since National Review’s report and, last time I checked, not a single high-profile national Democrat has asked him to withdraw from the race. A slew of Virginia Democrats — including his running mates Abigail Spanberger, the gubernatorial nominee, and Ghazala Hashmi, the lieutenant governor nominee — released statements condemning his 2022 rhetoric while stopping short of asking him to drop out.
ADDENDUM: Republicans got a kick out of NBC host Kristen Welker’s interview with Senator Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), in which she played an old clip of then-Congressman Schiff criticizing Republicans in 2013 for shutting down the government over Obamacare. “It’s more than fair to ask the President to negotiate . . . but not with the threat of shutting down the government.”