Connect with us

Congress

Jeanne Shaheen is Democrats’ shutdown whisperer

Published

on

If Republicans want to quickly bring the government shutdown to an end, they will need to get one particularly formidable Senate Democrat on board.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has emerged as a central player in the bipartisan back-channeling that has ramped up this week as congressional leaders and President Donald Trump remain locked in a bitter stalemate.

Shaheen brings key credentials to the negotiating table. She’s an original proponent of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits whose expiration has emerged as a key flashpoint in the shutdown debate. She’s a veteran appropriator who has long despised government shutdowns. And she’s set to retire next year after 18 years in the Senate, insulating her from some of the political pressures her colleagues are feeling.

Earlier this year, Shaheen was one of the 10 Democrats who helped advance a GOP-written stopgap to avoid a March shutdown — and one of two members of the caucus who ultimately voted for it. This time around, she’s holding out as she works to forge some sort of consensus that could reopen the government while putting Congress on a path to extend the tax credits past the end of the year.

“I’ve been in conversations with a number of colleagues on both sides of the aisle,” Shaheen told reporters this week after the bipartisan Senate talks spilled into the open, adding that the insurance subsidies are “one of the areas that we ought to be able to find agreement on.”

While Shaheen has an independent streak, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders are aware of her outreach, fellow Democrats say, and in some cases she has asked her colleagues to try to keep lines of communication open.

“She’s doing a good job,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has kept in close touch with Shaheen. “There’s a couple of times where she’s said, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ to move the ball, ‘This person it might be better for you to talk to.’”

Shaheen, whose office declined to comment, has been careful not to delve into the nitty-gritty of her discussions. But she is hardly keeping her efforts a secret. She has done a round of media appearances this week — including on Fox News — to stress that a deal could be in reach if congressional leaders come together.

Lending that claim credibility is her long involvement in other bipartisan negotiations. That includes a Senate “gang” that helped bring an end to a brief shutdown in early 2018. She was also involved in bipartisan talks during former President Joe Biden’s administration, including a 2021 infrastructure deal.

More recently, she’s built close relationships with Republicans as the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, making common cause in defense of NATO and against Russian President Vladimir Putin — who has put her on a blacklist of Americans created in response to sanction efforts. She recently helped advance Mike Waltz’s UN ambassador nomination in exchange for a foreign aid deal.

Top Republican leaders now see her among the handful of Democrats who they believe want to find a quick way out of the shutdown stalemate. Ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown, Shaheen declined for days to say how she would vote on a last-ditch attempt to pass a House-approved stopgap bill — the only off-ramp then available. Before and immediately after the Tuesday vote, she was spotted talking with several Republican senators, including Majority Leader John Thune.

“I think she’s one of many, as you know, on her side who tends to be kind of more in the reasonable caucus,” Thune said in an interview. “I think she’s looking for a path forward.”

Shaheen has been careful not to box herself or her colleagues in as they try to figure out an agreement about how to get out of the shutdown. And she’s opened the door to clamping down on the credits in order to win GOP support for extending them

While she hasn’t publicly locked herself into any specific proposal, she noted recently that nearly everyone who is getting help through the subsidies to pay for their health insurance makes less than $200,000 a year — an income figure that has also been raised by House moderates. Republicans are certain to press for an income cap as part of any agreement on an extension.

GOP senators say the health insurance subsidies are not her only concern. She is also looking at how to get full-year appropriations bills moving. (The funding bill she helps oversee as a subcommittee ranking member, for the Department of Agriculture, is part of a three-bill package that has effectively been stuck because of the shutdown fight.)

A person who has spoken with Shaheen who was granted anonymity to speak freely about her thinking said the senator is aware that Democrats are operating from a structural disadvantage since Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. The person added that while she is pushing for the best possible outcome and supports larger Democratic aims, she’s also being realistic about what is achievable in the negotiations.

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who is part of the group of Republicans talking to Shaheen, called her a “good partner” in the effort to find an end to the shutdown.

“She’s been kind of a good purveyor of the message,” Rounds said. “I mean, she gets the fact that we’re not going to do anything until we get out of the shutdown. So she’s trying to figure out a way to convince more of her team that we need to get this shutdown behind us and then we can get back to regular order.”

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Congress

DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote

Published

on

The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.

The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.

The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”

House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.

“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

Continue Reading

Congress

Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid

Published

on

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.

In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.

“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.

Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.

Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.

His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.

Continue Reading

Congress

‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal

Published

on

House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.

Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.

But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.

“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”

The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.

Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.

“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”

Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.

He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.

But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”

Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.

Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.

The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.

Continue Reading

Trending