‘Let’s Get This Done’: Republicans Seek to Wear Down Democrats’ Resistance Amid Shutdown

Republicans’ attempt to end the new government shutdown failed Wednesday, but there are signs that Democrats are listening to Republican arguments.

As the votes were tallied for the second vote on a seven-week stopgap funding bill to reopen the government, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., was spotted chatting with almost a dozen Democrat senators for an extended period. He explained after the vote that he was not making deals, but simply trying to persuade them to let it pass.

Rounds said he told Democrats that the White House would be aggressively targeting unwanted programs during the shutdown, a prime reason to end it.

“My message was, the longer you go on with a shutdown, the more of an opportunity it is for the administration to actually look through and identify who they want to permanently terminate. Wouldn’t it be better, since that has not occurred yet, to get rid of this shutdown as soon as possible?” he told reporters. “Let’s get this done … . We’ve got appropriation bills right now that are ready to roll.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., was among those on the other end of the conversation, and told reporters that Democrats are seeking to mend their relationship with Republicans and find ways to get their demands accepted, such as extending expiring COVID-19-era health care premium tax credits.

“No agreements were made. The Democrats … are trying to find a good faith way to move forward, get the [Affordable Care Act] tax credits that we want and also some of the appropriations that they’re asking for,” he said.

“This is us, just senators randomly just getting together and spitballing and then seeing if we could come to some kind of consensus, and then I think a lot of us would then go back to our leadership and then go from there,” added Gallego.

Democrats have a big wish list they have offered in exchange for their votes: undoing recently passed cost-saving Medicaid reforms, hamstringing the White House’s ability to rescind certain federal funding, and extending expiring Obamacare health care premium tax credits, which were enhanced during the previous administration. 

Gallego acknowledged that those requests would be difficult for Republicans to stomach.

“We have a trust issue, obviously, with the House and what they’re going to do—[Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson specifically,” Gallego said of the House of Representatives, which has tighter margins than the Senate and has a large conservative faction fiercely opposed to Democrats’ demands.

Republican leadership in the Senate has repeated on end that they would not negotiate with Democrats unless the government is reopened. Although Republicans talked with Democrats on the Senate floor, they all made clear that these were not deal-making sessions.

“People are just floating ideas, but the bottom line is, we’re not going to be negotiating anything during a shutdown,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who talked to the Democrats alongside Rounds. “Democrats can … vote to reopen the government, and then we can talk about the business we know we need to attend to.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., however, hopes these off-the-cuff conversations will morph into actual deal-making. 

“Republicans should be sitting down and talking to us. It’s a good thing that that’s happening,” Schumer told reporters.

Rounds, going into detail on his arguments with the Democrats, said he explained that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has already publicly expressed willingness to work through disagreements on the issue of expiring premium tax credits—a midterms issue that plenty of Republicans want to resolve.

He argued the best way to sort that out is through bipartisan appropriations talks, which the bill under consideration would make possible.

“What we reiterated to them is an affirmation of what our leadership has said, which is a 45-day—now a 44-day—extension is what will make this all fall into place,” said Rounds. “We will look at the ACA enhanced credits, which right now are critical for the states to be able to determine their rates for the coming year. I think we’ll resolve that issue.”

Rounds added that he thinks Democrats are distrustful and unsure of how to yield on their position.

Asked how Democrats responded to him, he told reporters, “Well, they’ve got to find a way to save some face, No. 1; and No. 2, they would like to get as much of a firm assurance that that is actually going to happen.”

One active discussion in the Senate is whether or not the Office of Management and Budget’s plans to slash unwanted jobs and programs during the shutdown helps or hinders the negotiations.

Schumer was livid about the OMB’s announcement of plans to slash funding in New York, his home state.

OMB Director Russ Vought “is using New Yorkers and New Jerseyites as pawns, and it’s a disgusting thing, and it shows how little regard Vought and [President Donald] Trump have for working families,” said Schumer when asked about the OMB freezing infrastructure funds for the New York subway system.

There’s also the issue of rescissions. Democrats have asked Republicans to provide some guarantee that the president wouldn’t exercise “pocket rescissions”—a legally debated method by which the White House can unilaterally cut funding without congressional approval.

From the outset, Democrats have argued that Republicans’ ability to rescind previously appropriated funding along party lines damages bipartisan negotiations. In late August, the president effectively declared that $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending was eliminated, a move that the Supreme Court allowed in a 6-3 decision.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal that he thinks that practice has, in fact, eroded trust within Congress.

“I think the pocket rescission is a horrible idea,” he said. “If you think about the limited amount of money in the scheme of things versus the ill will that created, I think it was a bad idea.”

Responding to Democrats demanding that Republicans cease voting on rescissions package during the duration of the stopgap funding bill, Tillis said, “That’s reasonable … I, for one, made it very clear I won’t vote for any rescission [of funding] that I can see was very clearly articulated as a basis for a compromise in the past that blows this place up if we start doing that.”

Rounds similarly said that was a major concern for the Democrats he talked to, but he argued that allowing for the appropriations process to continue would make the White House more reluctant to rescind funds in the future.

“Fom their part, Democrats are concerned about that. From our part, we’re just simply saying, ‘Look, if we do our appropriations process, it’s much more difficult for the administration to do rescissions, knowing that Republicans crafted, or had a hand in crafting, these particular bills,’” said Rounds.

In response to remarks on its handling of the shutdown, a White House spokesperson directed The Daily Signal to a quote from presidential press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who has said, “If the Democrats did not vote to shut down the government, we would not be standing up here talking about layoffs today.”

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