{"id":15038,"date":"2025-10-30T16:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T16:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/shutdown-ending-stopgap-will-have-to-move-first-in-any-deal-thune-says\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:01:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T16:01:55","slug":"shutdown-ending-stopgap-will-have-to-move-first-in-any-deal-thune-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/shutdown-ending-stopgap-will-have-to-move-first-in-any-deal-thune-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Shutdown-ending stopgap will have to move first in any deal, Thune says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> struck a cautionary note Thursday as bipartisan talks that could end the 30-day government shutdown kick into a higher gear, warning that a deal to advance full-year spending bills would move forward only after Democrats agree to a stopgap measure reopening federal agencies.<\/p>\n

Thune told reporters it would likely take days, if not weeks, for the Senate to pass a package of larger spending bills.<\/p>\n

“Even if you’ve got consent it’s still going to take a while to move those bills across the floor so we’ve got to reopen the government and then we’ll have a normal appropriations process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The comments come amid a new flurry of rank-and-file talks aimed at breaking the monthlong impasse. Part of those bipartisan discussions have focused on how to move fiscal 2026 spending bills, with some appropriators suggesting that a package of full-year-bills could advance as a show of good faith before the Senate passes a shutdown-ending stopgap.<\/p>\n

Both Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> rejected that idea Thursday, with the top House leader saying at a news conference that Republicans \u201chave one purpose, and that is, turning this thing back on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll those other efforts or deviations, it’s political games,\u201c he said.<\/p>\n

What has been offered by Republicans, as POLITICO previously reported<\/a>, is to quickly move two packages of spending bills once the government is reopened.<\/p>\n

The first would include the Agriculture-FDA, Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch bills. The second would include the Defense and Labor-HHS measures, as well as potentially Transportation-HUD and Commerce-Justice-Science funding. Some senators have discussed potentially trying to attach the first package, which has already passed the Senate, to a stopgap bill.<\/p>\n

How soon any of this could come together remains a mystery. Republicans believe Democrats are on the cusp of agreeing to end the shutdown as soon as next week, and Thune, during a Thursday morning interview with CNBC, pointed to Tuesday\u2019s off-year elections as a possible pivot point where the dynamic could shift on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

Notching a bipartisan appropriations deal, however, won\u2019t address Democrats\u2019 central shutdown demand: an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.<\/p>\n

Thune has offered Democrats a vote on the ACA subsidies as well as a meeting with President Donald Trump as soon as next week. But Democrats have called that insufficient, and some are starting to float a \u201cworking group\u201d to address the issue.<\/p>\n

Thune left the door open Thursday to launching an ACA working group after the government reopens but warned that he\u2019s “not a big fan of gangs.\u201d Instead, he said, \u201cI’m kind of a fan of regular order” \u2014 where committees with expertise in the matters being negotiated take the lead.<\/p>\n

But he acknowledged members of both parties are \u201cinterested\u201d in a working group and said he\u2019s \u201copen\u201d to the idea.<\/p>\n

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune struck a cautionary note Thursday as bipartisan talks that could end the 30-day government shutdown kick into a higher gear, warning that a deal to advance full-year spending bills would move forward only after Democrats agree to a stopgap measure reopening federal agencies. Thune told reporters it would likely take […]<\/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-15038","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\/15038","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=15038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}