The Shutdown Nonsense Drags On
Democrats are digging in.
POLITICO (“Senate will vote Friday to advance shutdown-ending deal, Thune tells Republicans“):
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told fellow Republicans in a private lunch that he plans to hold a vote Friday that could pave the way to end the government shutdown, according to two people in the room who were granted anonymity to describe his comments.
The plan, the people said, is to bring up the House-passed continuing resolution that Democrats have repeatedly rejected and then seek to amend it with a new expiration date very likely in January as well as a negotiated package of three full-year spending bills.
While Thune believed the plan would win the support of enough Democrats to advance, Democratic senators emerged from their own private lunch determined to seek out a better deal, and they are expected to block the House CR again absent additional progress in negotiations, according to two other people granted anonymity to describe the deliberations.
In any case, Senate GOP leaders are preparing to keep lawmakers in Washington to try and force a resolution to the record-breaking shutdown. Asked if the chamber will be in through the weekend, Majority Whip John Barrasso said “yes.”
Even if an agreement is reached in the coming days, finalizing the deal could take days due to procedural hurdles and objections from senators.
Asked if they were moving closer to an agreement, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — who has helped lead the bipartisan talks — told reporters after the Democratic lunch she didn’t know. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “very good, productive meeting.”
Government Executive (“There is bipartisan interest in federal worker layoff protections in any deal to reopen government“):
Congress is considering a proposal to reverse some federal employee layoffs as part of a deal to reopen government, lawmakers said on Thursday, as negotiations continue to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Lawmakers in both parties are floating a mandate the Trump administration walk back the more than 4,000 reductions in force agencies issued in October as part of the potential deal currently taking shape. That proposal would provide full-year appropriations for a select few agencies, while offering stopgap funding for the rest of government through a to-be-determined date.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers have been discussing the proposal in recent days, as well as a separate plan to avoid large increases to health care premiums for millions of Americans next year. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said on Thursday Republicans had sent over to Democrats a proposal on the spending provisions of an agreement, but did not lay out the details.
The Atlantic (“Just When It Looked Like the Shutdown Might End“):
In the hours before Democrats’ electoral victories Tuesday night, the end of the government shutdown seemed near. Several Democratic senators had spent the day quietly discussing a potential bipartisan settlement. Republican leaders had expressed confidence that once the “radical left” activists had their say at the polls, moderate lawmakers would have enough political cover to cave and reopen the government. President Donald Trump had been saying that Democrats were to blame for what is now the longest shutdown in U.S. history and would pay the price politically.
All of that changed as the vote totals rolled in. Democrats’ resounding statewide victories in Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, and elsewhere highlighted a more robust repudiation of Trump and his party than politicians from either side of the aisle had expected. Now both parties are recalibrating their shutdown strategies while the White House weighs a more direct role in cutting a deal. Any prospect of the government reopening this week appears to be slipping away.
Some Democrats feel like they have finally landed a clean punch after nine months of taking body blows from a pugilistic president. Letting up now, they are telling their more moderate colleagues, would be akin to surrender after voters gave their party its first burst of political moxie since Trump won a return ticket to the White House 12 months ago.
Meanwhile, we’re experiencing crippling shutdowns to our air travel system and a million and a half federal workers haven’t been paid in six weeks. Members of Congress continue to be paid, naturally.
“Only Democrats have agency.”
Haven’t we been through this nonsense before?
@drj: The shutdown is the result of a Democratic filibuster. Republicans have repeatedly offered to keep operating under the Biden budget. And they’re now offering all manner of other concessions.
@James Joyner:
Except for the “concession” of negotiating in good faith.
While the Democrats do have a significant share of the blame, the fact that the Republican could change the rules and pass the CR without Dems will continue to mean that they have independent, and ultimate, responsibility.
Reps can reopen the government without Democratic help, but the converse is not true. Ergo: who has the final word here?
My demands would be a list of policy changes all designed to pull back power to Congress. Like changes to Insurrection Act, Alien Enemies Act, International Emergency Economic Powers Act, etc. I’m sure there are a host of other laws that this administration has abused. These changes should have been made back when Democrats were in charge but weren’t. I blame Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
@Steven L. Taylor: It is true that Republicans can vote to do away with the filibuster, something neither party has been willing to do for nearly 200 years. We’ve been predicting for some time that the other party would do so once they have power, but none have quite done so, instead chipping away at it for various instances. But using it to end the shutdown would end it entirely.
Not sure the shutdowns are going to be that crippling. Even the United Airlines head said the cutbacks would have the impact of a mid sized storm. We shall see.
@James Joyner: All true, but none of that absolves them of having the power to do so, and hence the ultimate responsibility.
I just think this should not be ignored in any assessment of who has what power over what.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Not to mention that there is nothing preventing Republicans from negotiating with the Dems over the heath care issues. It seems to me that it would actually help them, given that so many Republican voters are on SNAP and Medicaid. They seem to acting like there s some immutable law that prevents them from negotiating. But if they thing that denying their constituents affordable health care is a winning move then I guess it’s going to be a long shut down.
If they do get rid of the filibuster, just so they can let those premiums go sky high, then the campaign ads write themselves. They will have no one to blame but themselves when a blue wave whisks the Democrats into power with no filibuster in the senate.
Seems to me that there has to be some solution to the trust issue. Republicans just screwed over the Democrats with the Recission package. Items that were negotiated and passed with 60 or more votes were then struck down in the Recission by just a majority. I would not forget that. Plus the Administration basically violating the Impoundment Act. If I were Democrats, I would not trust the other side under any circumstance.
@Steven L. Taylor:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Not to mention that since the GQP knew they needed 60 votes, meaning they needed a few Democratic votes, they could have negotiated what to include or take out from their CR with some Democrats to prevent a shutdown from even taking place to begin with.
And that they might be willing to negotiate something now, because a CR for almost two months is vastly different than one for 11 days.
Which brings up another point. The whole purpose of the CR was to give Congress time to complete its Appropriations bills. The government shut down does not halt that process. So why haven’t the Appropriations bills been completed and passed in the 7 weeks they gave themselves to complete them?
I don’t have an account that lets me see the WaPo air travel system article, so I can’t see much beyond “…a shutdown-related FAA directive,” but the government shutdown is only one contributor to the problem. The U.S. air travel system was already going to be stretched thin during the holidays due to the incompetent approach to claimed government cost-cutting this year, on top of an air travel system that already needed bolstering.
The problem is often stated as a shortage of air traffic controllers and TSA employees–but especially air traffic controllers–due, somehow, to the shutdown. Perhaps the FAA hasn’t been onboarding new ATCs for the last six weeks, and maybe there are edge-case ATCs who can’t cope financially and need to spend time on side gigs. But ATCs are a select group of highly trained and well-paid people. And they still get benefits such as health insurance despite not receiving a paycheck, and for those who don’t have savings to get them through, most would be eligible to take out a loan from their TSP (similar to 401k) account, knowing that they can pay it off when the shutdown ends and they get their back pay. I don’t expect ATCs go on record saying, “I wasn’t getting a paycheck, so f*ck it, I called out sick,” but it’d be interesting to know how the available ATC numbers have been affected by just the shutdown.
@James Joyner:
Nope. Republicans killed the “Biden budget” with a recissions package that received no Dem votes. While Trump guts the federal workforce without Congressional approval or Democratic buy-in, illegally usurps Congress’s taxation authority with reckless blanket tariffs, and has unilaterally destroyed agencies Biden left funded.
If Republicans want to keep operating under this Impoundment-Recissions-DOGE Budget — using unprecedented and unconstitutional methods unseen previously — then they could surely take the step of altering the filibuster (again) to do so. It wasn’t 200+ years ago that Mitch McConnell and Republicans modified the filibuster to create a carveout for judicial nominees.
Or, if they insist on having Dem votes for their Anti-Biden Project 2025 Budget, Republicans could add Obamacare funding to the package to obtain said votes.
So both Dems and Republicans have the ability to act. Potted plants they are not.
@Kathy:
This. Is what caused the shutdown. The majority party can write a bill, but it’s incumbent upon them to negotiate with the other party when they need to other party’s votes. The majority’s recent position that they’ll only negotiate after the Dems vote to pass their CR is laughable. They’ve had plenty of time to negotiate.
And while the Dem’s primary demand–extension of ACA subsidies–is indeed something beyond the current law, everyone knew that the subsidies were to expire, that premiums would skyrocket, and as a result millions of people would lose healthcare insurance. That is a huge deal.
I have to say that it still feels like most of America (including me) is not really feeling the impact of the shutdown so until that happens it shall continue.
As you yourself noted James, we have both been reading articles, blog posts, etc., about how folks in Congress supposedly hate the Filibuster and want to do away with it for decades (I hit 54 years young this year, so yeah…been reading about folks bitching about the filibuster for many years now). For the first time in as long as I can remember, Congress has a perfect opportunity to get rid of the filibuster.
They control most, if not all of the levers of power in D.C. at this moment, and Trump has given them explicit instructions to do away with filibuster. My question to the GOP is what you are waiting for, you have your marching orders and have been quick to say in unison, how high? when Trump has provided your marching orders over the past 9 months.
We all know that it is the Democrats reaction to Trump’s marching orders to the GOP that genuinely caught them by surprise, doing away with the filibuster has been a threat used mostly against Democrats for decades, and for the first time in what seems like forever, the Democratic party seems resigned to the fact that the GOP has the power to nuke the filibuster, and is all like, we get it GOP, you do what you have to do to re-open the government including nuking the filibuster, and we will just have to adjust to life in Congress without that particular tool to pull out of our back pocket.
I do not really travel all that much (even by car, lol) but if tens of millions of Americans start to feel the inconvenience of the shutdown due to travel being snarled during the Holiday season, and Democrats get on TV at the same time to put out ads saying to America the GOP has the means to end shutdown, all they have to do is end the filibuster, and we will have resigned ourselves to the fact that elections matter and they have all the power to end the shutdown and we are prepared to accept this action the GOP takes, so America step up to your GOP member of Congress and say it loud and proud, end the filibuster now!
@Steven L. Taylor @Charley in Cleveland: @Kathy: : Oh, Republicans could absolutely have been negotiating in better faith rather than offering a take-it-or-leave-it approach. But the reason for the subhead is that there was every sign that there was going to be an agreement this week, with real negotiations going on. Democrats have instead decided to double down, taking their wins Tuesday as a sign that voters are on their side.
These utter tools think that offering something they realized they needed to do–and were in the process OF DOING ANYWAY–is some kind of incentive?
Republicans do not operate or negotiate in good faith. Ever, apparently.
Let us not forget that Republicans had a reconciliation vehicle available to them, but they used it to pass the BBB. More agency from them. Perhaps somebody thought, “They wouldn’t dare!”
Which is an odd way to say that voters really don’t want their already outrageous insurance premiums to double.
Also of note;
October job losses were the worst in 20 years.
Consumer sentiment dropped to the lowest in more than three years and just off its worst level ever.
@James Joyner: “The shutdown is the result of a Democratic filibuster. Republicans have repeatedly offered to keep operating under the Biden budget. And they’re now offering all manner of other concessions”
Since Trump has repeatedly changed that budget at will, the offer is simply not true. It’s Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
Also, all concessions are lies, since Trump can and will violate them at will.
James, as a political scientist you should know this – Trump’s operated under ‘f*ck you, make me’ for decades. This means that contract negotiations are – problematic.
@James Joyner: “It is true that Republicans can vote to do away with the filibuster, something neither party has been willing to do for nearly 200 years. ”
The filibuster now has no relation to stuff under the same name decades ago.
@Scott: “Even the United Airlines head said the cutbacks would have the impact of a mid sized storm. We shall see.”
Last week I spent four hours at SFO because of ATC issues combined with one of those minor storms. Multiply my four hours by the thousands of people trying to fly into Newark that day.
Then set that as the baseline for every day going forward until the shutdown ends. How many millions of hours lost, how much money disappeared out of the economy then?
@James Joyner: FWIW, I have no gripe with the subhead.
I just think that any discussion of the shutdown that talks about responsibility and who has the power to stop it should include the GOP’s option on the filibuster itself.
I acknowledge that they think the cost is too high, but that doesn’t take away the fact that they have that option.
@Scott: Seconding, Thirding and Fourthing.
@Barry_D:
BTW, this is an important point as well.
@James Joyner: ” Oh, Republicans could absolutely have been negotiating in better faith rather than offering a take-it-or-leave-it approach. ”
When you do ‘take it or leave it’, the other side might leave it.
When you do ‘take it or leave it and we break it’, even moreso.
One other thing is that people can get used to a lot of things.
The 90s shutdown was epic, because it was the first long, drawn out one. By 2008 I heard a lot about it on a message board where I posted about a visit to Hoover Dam. A large number of people who tried to visit during the 90s shutdown couldn’t.
Since then there have been others of varying lengths, from a day to a couple of weeks, and the 2019 Holiday Shutdown, brought to you by El Taco and the Taco Party, which ruined Xmas for lots of people.
Compared to the trauma of the first long shutdown, coupled with a few others, and seeing it’s not happening over the major Christian holidays, people are kind of getting used to such things.
Meantime the GQP has resorted to holding SNAP hostage, despite a contingency fund appropriated by Congress, and despite a judge’s ruling on the matter. They’re also threatening not to issue back pay once the shutdown ends, which is also against the law.
Who looks reasonable and who doesn’t?
@James Joyner:
The House is in permanent recess. There can be no useful negotiations.
And the administration has not been following the existing budget anyway with impoundment, recessions and illegal spending so… why should the Democrats do anything?
Republicans broke the process. They have to fix it — they can either kill the filibuster, or offer enough of an incentive to get a few Democrats to accept playing the role of Charlie Brown kicking a football held by Lucy.
They don’t even need to hold up their end, just coax a few fools into believing them and then pull it away!
@Daryl:
The Georgia PSC elections with the two Dems each winning 62/38 statewide, should be getting some attention from Congressional Republicans. People will still vote based on big increases in household expenses.
@Gustopher:
This. The Senate can’t promise anything that the House has not already approved. If Johnson’s not involved, it’s not under negotiation.
How much longer does it even make sense for the Taco Party to keep this up?
Apparently Johnson won’t reopen the House for next week. Next Friday will be the 14th, or 7 days before the House CR would run out if it were passed.
But fine. Pass it then, and they all have to go into a frenzy to craft another one in seven days. No doubt ignoring the existence of the opposition party whose votes they need.
This is so beyond bizarre and stupid, I’m forced to paraphrase Golan Trevize: That’s insane. It’s even worse. It’s ridiculous.
@Kathy: if they open the House, they have to seat a Democrat. That Democrat will be the 218th signature on the discharge petition to force a vote on subpoenaing the Epstein files.
The House must not go into session until Johnson can pressure one of 4 Republicans to take their name off the discharge petition.
There are pedophiles to protect, dontcha know?
Who cares about food stamps, or air traffic controllers, or government workers, or health insurance when there are pedophiles to protect. Pedophiles, pure as driven snow. Sweet, innocent pedophiles. Wealthy and powerful pedophiles.
Senorita, you’re from another country, so you might not understand it, but here in the good ol’ US of A, we protect our precious pedophiles. It’s as American as apple pie, childhood beauty pageants, and monster truck rallies. Yeehaw.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/07/government-shutdown-democrats-schumer-trump-aca.html
The Democrats made an offer; the GOP told them to f*ck off.
@Gustopher:
US politics is kind of a hobby. A good thing, too, as US politics has global consequences. I think if my grasp of it were not good, I’d have been laughed out of this community long ago (I admit I lack some knowledge and have some blind spots).
But the Epstein file rationale for keeping the House in permanent recess, would qualify in the Trevize paraphrase above as even worse than ridiculous.
Protecting pedophiles also seems to be a Catholic church thing. The odd part is many of the ones they protect are not rich.
@wr:
If you’ve got to be stuck in an airport, SFO’s a good choice.
This is the “official” justification for the filibuster: it prevents the tyranny of the majority, forcing the majority party to negotiate with the minority to reach compromises acceptable to both.
Which is precisely what MAGA Republicans have consistently refused to do with this bill.
In other words Republicans want to retain the filibuster, but to dictate when Democrats can use it.
Democrats must be grateful to Trump and Vought for saying repeatedly that Republicans can and must end the shutdown without Democratic votes. It’s blown out of the water the “Schumer Shutdown” nonsense. And the shutdown is handing some unanticipated political gifts to Democrats: “The courts ordered Trump to keep paying SNAP benefits. He refused” should make good advertising copy.
It’s always fun to watch the contortions James must bend himself into so that he keeps believing Spanberger’s 15 point win just has to be Less Significant than Youngkin’s 1.5 point win. And repeat that logic for every race nationwide.
It’s not Democrats digging in. It’s Republicans — specifically the tetrarchy of Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Scott Bessent, and Howard Lutnick — because the results of this shutdown are exactly what they’ve always wanted to do. It’s word-for-word the text of Project 2025. Oopsie!
Now that they’ve reached the FO phase which is the natural result of all glibertarian conservative stupidity, they’re pressing the “Democrats Please Save Us We’re Entirely Incompetent” button. And for once, Democrats aren’t caving.