The off-year elections last Tuesday changed the shutdown fight in a way many on Capitol Hill had not expected.
Early last week, lawmakers from both parties expressed a glimmer of optimism that they were on track to resolve the budget impasse. Centrist senators in both parties were negotiating a possible spending compromise, and observers predicted a November 4 election. Lubricate skids for quick reopening Of the Government.
Exactly the opposite happened.
After Tuesday’s blue wave, Democrats think they have the political winds are behind themThat has given them the right to insist that health care subsidies be part of any deal to end the shutdown.
Congressional Republicans are also insisting they will not negotiate on health care, or anything else, until the government reopens.
And President Trump has not helped close this gap. Since the election, he has continued to reject requests from Democrats to begin bipartisan talks, instead urging GOP senators to end the shutdown through strictly partisan tactics. abolishing the senate filibuster — an idea that even most Republicans in the Capitol oppose.
The combination has heightened tensions between Republicans and Democrats, who were far from each other at any point during the shutdown, and complicates the path to a final resolution. Indeed, by the end of last week, the nascent Senate deal, which had been under discussion just days earlier, had collapsed.
The breakdown became clear after the Senate Democratic luncheon on Thursday, when even centrist Democrats involved in the talks indicated they were far from an agreement. GOP leaders wasted no time in pointing the finger at moderate Democrats for relying on Tuesday’s election results to pressure their liberal allies to abandon the emerging bipartisan compromise.
“I know the pep rally he had at lunch yesterday obviously changed some people’s minds,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (D-S.D.) told reporters at the Capitol on Friday. “I thought we were on a path. We’ve given them everything they wanted – or they asked for – and at some point… they’re going to have to take yes for an answer.
“They were headed in that direction, and then yesterday, the wheels came off,” Thune said. “We are ready to engage when they are.”
Ahead of the elections on November 4, many lawmakers and other political experts had predicted that the results would help ease the stubborn partisan impasse and persuade one party or the other to soften their demands to help end the shutdown, which entered its 40th day on Sunday.
“The election will give somebody some leverage,” one Democratic strategist said several days before voters went to the polls. “It all changes – your feeling of, ‘How much will I resist?’ “That will change on Tuesday.”
It’s not played out that way.
While the results overwhelmingly favored Democrats — and some had predicted that a blue wave would give Democrats the political space to reopen the government and move later on health care — the landslide victory encouraged party leaders to double down on their demands.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) echoed those sentiments a day after the election, saying the results were “a decisive refutation of Donald Trump and failed Republican policies” — one that will only encourage Democrats to stick to their guns.
“Our position as House Democrats — working together with our friends and colleagues at the Senate Democrats on the other side of the Capitol — remains the same,” Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol.
A day later, Senate Democrats hosted their own luncheon, which appeared to unify the party behind a strategy of pushing for an Obamacare fix as part of any deal to reopen the government. And on Friday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took it a step furtherby proposingFor the first time, a series of specific provisions that Democrats want to see as part of any agreement, including a one-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.
“Democrats have said we must solve the health care crisis, but Republicans have repeatedly said they will not negotiate to lower health care costs until the government reopens,” Schumer said on the chamber floor. “So let’s find a way to respect both positions.”
The one-year window for ACA subsidies was a concession from Democrats, who had previously insisted that the extension be permanent. Still, Republicans wasted no time rejecting schumer’s proposal out of hand, revealing that his election defeat last week has done nothing to soften his demand to reopen the government before health care talks begin.
“Everyone who follows this knows this is a non-starter,” Thune said Friday after Schumer’s speech. “There’s no way. Obamacare expansion is the only negotiation. That’s what we’re going to negotiate as soon as the government opens.”
However, the Democrats are also not budging. “The Democrats’ position remains unchanged,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), head of the House Democratic caucus, told reporters last week.
And the polls have given him new fuel — and new pressure from his liberal base — to stay on that path.
While the president’s party has historically performed poorly in off-year polls following a presidential election – and Democrats were projected to prevail in key contests in Virginia, New Jersey and California – he was not expected to win by as large a margin as he did.
In Virginia, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) won the governor’s race by 15 points. In New Jersey, incumbent Representative Mickey Sherrill (D-N.J.) won by 13 points. And Californians voted overwhelmingly to redrawn the Golden State’s House map to secure more Democratic seats — a direct response to Trump’s redistricting campaign in many Republican-led states.
GOP leaders played down the results, saying they were not concerned with what might happen in next year’s midterm elections, when House elections are held.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) said, “What happened last night was a vote for blue states and blue cities.” said the morning after“We all saw this coming.”
Democrats have always insisted that GOP leaders sit down and discuss a budget deal, including an effort to prevent increased Obamacare subsidies from expiring at the end of the year.
Calls for new negotiations have been rejected by Thune, Trump and Johnson, who say they have nothing to negotiate because their stopgap proposal to reopen the government is a “clean” bill that keeps spending at current levels. Last week, Schumer and Jeffries wrote to Trump asking for another meeting. This was ignored.
Yet if history is any predictor, Trump’s participation will be crucial if the two sides hope to reach an agreement. This was the case during the shutdown in 2019 under Trump’s first term, and a growing number of lawmakers –Even on the Republican side– Let’s assume that will be true in this budget fight as well.
“He needs to step off the sidelines and get in the game. Because until he does that, this government will be shut down,” Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday. “Mike Johnson and John Thune have no authority to act on their own.”
