{"id":13410,"date":"2025-09-18T08:46:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T08:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-shutdown-endgame-is-sketchy-as-deadline-looms\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T08:46:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T08:46:58","slug":"democrats-shutdown-endgame-is-sketchy-as-deadline-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-shutdown-endgame-is-sketchy-as-deadline-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats\u2019 shutdown endgame is sketchy as deadline looms"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democrats are gearing up to reject a GOP stopgap funding bill<\/a> and potentially spark a government shutdown. What happens then, no one seems to know.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ahead of the key deadline, party leaders are staking out a rhetorical hard line demanding that their Republican counterparts come to the negotiating table to discuss concessions on health care and other issues.<\/p>\n

They released an alternative funding patch<\/a> Wednesday that extends government funding through the end of October and tacks on a host of policy demands, including an extension of health care subsidies, the repeal of Medicaid cuts in the GOP megabill and more.<\/p>\n

Democrats hope the counteroffer will kindle bipartisan talks. But Republicans are instead accusing them of hypocrisy, citing all the times they insisted the GOP had to swallow a \u201cclean\u201d short-term funding bill in past shutdown fights.<\/p>\n

Still, under tremendous pressure from their base to show that they are willing to fight President Donald Trump, Democrats are flirting with a politically risky shutdown without a firm exit plan or even an idea of what victory might look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may not have the luxury of a victory scenario,\u201d said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). \u201cI think what we’re trying to do is avoid things getting worse. I don’t think victory is in anyone’s hopes and dreams in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus far, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have focused on the lowest common denominator uniting the various factions inside their ranks: demanding negotiations in return for Democratic votes to avoid a shutdown \u2014 which are necessary due to the Senate filibuster.<\/p>\n

But their GOP counterparts, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, have been more than happy to turn the tables and paint Democrats as the ones making unreasonable demands.<\/p>\n

Already chafing at the lack of GOP outreach, Democrats were further inflamed by Trump, who said on Friday that Republicans shouldn\u2019t \u201ceven bother dealing with them\u201d<\/a> on a funding deal, Senate math notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of diverse views in the caucus, but we\u2019re all professional politicians and an iron law in politics is that if you want someone’s vote, you have to ask what it would take to get it,\u201d said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is in line to be the next Democratic whip. \u201cAnd they haven\u2019t even asked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike in March, when Schumer flinched in a similar<\/a>standoff, party leaders are now betting they\u2019re on firmer political ground for a fight. But it\u2019s still not clear just how comfortable Democrats, who have generally tried to portray themselves as Capitol Hill\u2019s \u201cadults in the room,\u201d will feel as a possible Oct. 1 shutdown grows nearer \u2014 or after one comes to pass.<\/p>\n

Asked Wednesday night if he was willing to shut the government down, Schumer bristled: \u201cAsk the Republicans if they are willing to shut the government down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats could lose some of their own members on the GOP bill. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has already vowed to support it, and several other Democratic senators have yet to put themselves in the \u201cno\u201d column with the whip effort still underway.<\/p>\n

Jeffries privately huddled with swing-district lawmakers Wednesday morning to hear out their concerns. Most of them, while publicly declining to commit to opposing the stopgap funding bill, are staking out conditions for support that the GOP is unlikely to give them this month \u2014 or ever.<\/p>\n

There are few signs from Republicans that they will be any more amenable to opposition demands if Senate Democrats reject the seven-week GOP funding bill<\/a> and the government potentially shuts down.<\/p>\n

Asked about the idea that Republicans had to give Democrats something in return for their votes, the typically affable Thune snapped Wednesday, arguing that Republicans supported similar funding bills more than a dozen times in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re talking about right now is giving the appropriators a chance to actually pass bills. \u2026 Is that difficult to understand?\u201d Thune said. \u201cWhere are we supposed to do big policy initiatives on a seven-week extension to fund the government?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thune indicated this week that Schumer is free to call him<\/a> or come to his office for a meeting. Democrats believe the South Dakota Republican, as majority leader, has to initiate the negotiations.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there is hardly a firm consensus on what Democrats would consider a worthy trade for their votes beyond a general emphasis on health care. Most Democrats agree they need to push for an extension of health insurance subsidies that are set to expire next year as a baseline demand. Others want to push for the unlikely reversal of the Medicaid cuts from the GOP\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d bill. Still others want firm protections against future Trump administration attempts to withhold congressionally approved spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect them to come and negotiate and to live up to what they told their voters back in \u201924, not even a year ago, what they were going to do, which was lower costs. And health care is a huge part of that,\u201d House Minority Whip Katherine Clark told reporters Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Many of those demands were included in Democrats\u2019 alternative stopgap released Wednesday. But GOP leaders insist there is no way to cut a deal in the time remaining \u2014 even on extending the expiring health subsidies, which has some Republican support<\/a>. Schumer and Jeffries have been cagey about possibly swallowing a short-term funding punt now in exchange for potential negotiations later.<\/p>\n

Asked Wednesday evening if getting a commitment to work on issues like the health care subsidies would be enough to get Democrats on board with a stopgap, Schumer did not definitively reject the idea.<\/p>\n

“We have two weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cThey should sit down and talk to us and we maybe can get to a good proposal, let’s see. But when they don’t talk to us, there’s no hope of getting to a good proposal.”<\/p>\n

And pressed Wednesday about whether their calls for \u201cbipartisan negotiation\u201d meant that any talks had to be concluded by Sept. 30 or if ongoing talks would be enough, several Democratic senators declined to answer directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very smart question. I\u2019m not sure I know the answer,\u201d said Schatz, adding that Thune\u2019s \u201ccome by anytime\u201d rhetoric is not the way things should work.<\/p>\n

More generally, a sense of gung-ho enthusiasm about a shutdown fight was hard to detect inside the Democratic ranks.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers who would be furloughed in a shutdown, suggested it was a little too early to go to the mattresses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is today \u2014 the 17th of September?\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s have a debate about the alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democratic leader who joined Schumer to advance the GOP funding bill in March, indicated Wednesday that he expects to vote against Republicans\u2019 proposal this time.<\/p>\n

But asked if he was comfortable going into a shutdown, Durbin rejected the premise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s another option available,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s bipartisan negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats are gearing up to reject a GOP stopgap funding bill and potentially spark a government shutdown. What happens then, no one seems to know. Two weeks ahead of the key deadline, party leaders are staking out a rhetorical hard line demanding that their Republican counterparts come to the negotiating table to discuss concessions on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}