Senate Democrats voted for a 14th time to keep the federal government closed on Tuesday, marking the 35th day of the shutdown.
While speaking with reporters on Tuesday about “how close” bipartisan talks are to reaching a solution, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “I hope close, but the pressures, the cross-pressures that everybody’s feeling, are great.”
“But I think there are people who realize this has gone on long enough and there’s been enough pain inflicted on the American people and it’s time to end it,” Thune said. “We’ll see whether the sufficient numbers are there.”
He said he’s doing “everything he can” to make it clear what Republicans are willing to do on appropriations, funding the government, and changes to Obamacare.
“So the universe I think is pretty defined and established,” he said. “The question is whether or not they take yes for an answer.”
The South Dakota Republican said he’s hopeful that “we’ll make some progress” this week, saying “we are trying to land this appropriations bill on which I think a continuing resolution could ride, and obviously we’re going to have to extend the date as everybody knows because we’re already up against the November deadline right now.”
“So we’ll see in the next few days where it goes,” Thune added.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the possibility of extending the funding date in the House-passed continuing resolution. He said the House would return to vote on any change that the Senate manages to pass.
“If the Senate passes something, of course we’ll come back,” Johnson said. “We’re running out of clock, obviously.”
He also said he favors extending the date until January rather than December.
“I am not a fan of extending it to December, because, let’s be frank, a lot of people around here have PTSD about Christmas omnibus spending bills. We don’t want to do that. It gets too close, and we don’t want to have that risk. We’re not doing that. Too many people have concerns,” the speaker said. “I think putting it into January makes sense, but we’ve got to obviously build consensus around that. There’s some discussion about it. We’ll see where it lands. I’m not sure.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, told reporters Tuesday morning that he’s “pretty confident” the shutdown will end this week, saying it could be resolved Wednesday night, or more likely on Thursday or Friday.
“You can’t make sense out of crazy, and that’s where Chuck Schumer’s been this whole time, and it’s hard to fight politics and policy at the same time,” Mullin said. “But I will tell you there’s enough Democrats that I’m friends with that were willing to vote last week, and they were assured that Schumer would let them vote the way they need to this week.”
President Donald Trump recently urged Senate Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” — a rules change that would allow legislation to pass with a simple majority vote — in order to bring an end to the 30-day government shutdown.
Trump also claimed that Democratic demands to reopen the government, such as $1.5 trillion in new spending that will include healthcare funds that will go to illegal aliens, “will hurt American citizens, and Republicans will not let it happen.”
The 60-vote threshold required to advance legislation in the Senate has blocked Republicans from moving forward with a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government at pre-shutdown levels.
Since federal funding expired on Oct. 1, all but three Senate Democrats have voted against the Trump-backed measure more than a dozen times.
Republicans currently need five additional votes to move the bill ahead.
In addition to ending what has become known as the “Schumer Shutdown,” after Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Trump pointed to “all of the other things we would get” without the legislative filibuster, “such as the best Judges, the best US Attorneys, the best of everything.”