{"id":13991,"date":"2025-10-02T18:01:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/weekend-votes-unlikely-thune-says-meaning-shutdown-could-push-into-next-week\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T18:01:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:01:40","slug":"weekend-votes-unlikely-thune-says-meaning-shutdown-could-push-into-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/weekend-votes-unlikely-thune-says-meaning-shutdown-could-push-into-next-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend votes \u2018unlikely,\u2019 Thune says, meaning shutdown could push into next week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> said on Thursday that it\u2019s \u201cunlikely\u201d senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend, all but guaranteeing the government shutdown goes into next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we\u2019ll give them the weekend to think about it, and then we\u2019ll come back and vote on Monday,\u201d Thune told reporters.<\/p>\n

Thune\u2019s comments come as congressional leaders and the White House remain in a stalemate on the second day of the shutdown. Thune left the door open to meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> this week but seemed skeptical that a sitdown would produce a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Schumer said in a statement Thursday that Republicans need to work with Democrats \u201cto reach an agreement to reopen the government and lower healthcare costs\u201d and predicted that GOP unity will crack the longer the shutdown drags on.<\/p>\n

Thune, however, reiterated he won\u2019t negotiate the substance<\/a> of a deal to extend expiring Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies while the government is closed. He added that while he\u2019s being updated on bipartisan talks among rank-and-file senators \u2014 and keeping the White House updated on what Democrats are floating \u2014 \u201cit all starts with reopening the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Democrats have floated possible concessions that could be included in a deal short of attaching an extension of the ACA subsidies to a stopgap funding bill. Those include possibly passing full-year appropriations bills or moving from the seven-week stopgap bill<\/a> passed by the House to a shorter punt. Some have argued for a Nov. 1 expiration date to align with the HealthCare.gov open enrollment period.<\/p>\n

But Thune rejected that idea, saying Democrats were \u201cquibbling over pretty small stuff\u201d in arguing for Nov. 1 versus the Nov. 21 deadline embedded in the House stopgap. He also warned that \u201cthere\u2019s no way you can do a straight-up extension\u201d of the Affordable Care Act subsidies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Thursday that it\u2019s \u201cunlikely\u201d senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend, all but guaranteeing the government shutdown goes into next week. \u201cThey\u2019ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we\u2019ll give them the weekend to think about […]<\/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-13991","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\/13991","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=13991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}