As the shutdown fight stretches into its second week, the winds have shifted in favor of the Democrats — at least for the moment.
Early polls say voters are more likely to blame President Trump and the Republicans for the lengthy impasse. The president and his congressional allies are publicly at odds over compensation for furloughed workers. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is sending mixed messages on whether to protect military pay. And prominent cracks are emerging in the GOP’s resistance to extending ObamaCare subsidies.
The combination has put Republican leaders on the defensive, even as they’re faulting Democrats for the long impasse. And the developments have boosted the Democrats’ confidence that they’ll be able to maintain their unified front, both in opposing the GOP’s short-term spending bill and demanding an extension of ObamaCare tax credits, which remains the issue at the center of the deadlock.
“Democrats have been consistent. Our position remains the same, we’ve been saying it for months,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday on the chamber floor. “Republicans are shutting down the government because they refuse to address the crisis in American healthcare.”
A short time later, Schumer joined 43 other Senate Democrats in opposing the Republicans’ continuing resolution (CR). The 54-45 tally fell shy of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster, marking the sixth time the bill has failed in the upper chamber.
Two Democrats and one independent crossed the aisle to support the bill. But all three of those senators — John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats — have supported the bill during the last five rounds of votes. The fact no new Democrats are defecting has denied GOP leaders any momentum they were hoping to generate with their strategy of bringing the legislation to the floor almost every day of the shutdown so far.
House Democrats, meanwhile, are taking long steps to highlight Johnson’s decision to cancel all House votes since two days before the shutdown began.
“Republicans love to advocate for more work requirements for poor people — people on SNAP, people on Medicaid,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said. “Well, I’ve got an idea. Let’s have a work requirement for Republicans to show up to Congress and do your goddamn job.”
GOP leaders are just as confident as Democrats that they’re winning the fight. They haven’t budged from their position of refusing to negotiate on health care — or anything else — until Democrats help to reopen the government.
“The House is done. The ball is now in the Senate’s court,” Johnson said Wednesday during a press conference. “It does us no good to be here dithering on show votes.”
“I know this story’s getting old. You’re trying to find new angles, but it’s the same [thing] — the conversation will happen when we open up the government,” echoed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), adding that nothing has changed.
Still, some things have changed in recent days, and virtually all of them suggest Democrats have the upper hand, at least temporarily.
Public polls, although early, have consistently found voters blaming Republicans more than Democrats for the stalemate.
A YouGov poll conducted in the early days of the shutdown found that 45 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans, versus 36 percent who hold Democrats responsible.
A new CBS survey released this week also found the gap to be nine percentage points, with 39 percent of respondents holding Trump and Republicans to account, versus 30 percent who blame Democrats. Other polls have given Democrats a similar edge.
Republicans are also facing challenges surrounding Trump’s threat not to provide back pay to furloughed federal workers. Such compensation has been routine during shutdowns in the past, and Trump had signed a law in 2019 that seemed to codify the trend. But the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) this week cast new doubts on the automatic nature of the payments, saying the government is under no legal obligation to provide them — a message Trump amplified from the White House.
The news sparked a backlash from a number of congressional Republicans, who quickly pushed back in support of the back pay.
“It’s not up to the president,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday. “I mean, his opinion matters, but Congress has got to appropriate the money.
“Read the Constitution.”
As Democrats have dug in, Trump and others have signaled they may be budging on their tactics.
Despite officials saying last week that layoffs were “imminent” and Trump suggesting over the weekend they had already started, the layoffs have yet to come to fruition.
And Trump appeared to hedge on the OMB memo, saying Tuesday, “For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people.”
The fight over military pay is also creating headaches for GOP leaders. On Tuesday, Johnson suggested he might call the House back to Washington to vote on a stand-alone bill to ensure that military personnel won’t miss any shutdown paychecks, the first of which is due on Oct. 15.
“I’m certainly open to that. We’ve done it in the past,” he said. “We want to make sure that our troops are paid.”
But on Wednesday, the Speaker walked it back, saying that if Democrats want the troops to be paid, they should support the Republicans’ continuing resolution (CR).
“Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democrats are clamoring to get back here and have another vote because some of them want to get on record and say they’re for paying the troops,” he said. “We already had that vote, it’s called the CR.”
Trump was asked Wednesday afternoon whether he would urge Congress to pass a stand-alone bill ensuring troops get paid during the shutdown. The president expressed support, but indicated he was in no rush.
“Yeah, that probably will happen. We don’t have to worry about it yet. That’s a long time,” Trump said. “You know what one week is for me? An eternity. … Our military is always going to be taken care of.”
In the health care debate, Republicans are also sending mixed messages.
Conservatives are adamantly opposed to the extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies at the heart of the shutdown debate, and GOP leaders say they won’t negotiate on the issue until the government is reopened. But some frontline GOP lawmakers facing tough reelection contests are pushing for a one-year extension of those tax credits, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a close Trump ally, is also pressing Republican leaders to address it urgently.
“The issues of the subsidies are real,” Greene told NewsNation on Tuesday. “It’s not something that anybody can say is made up.”
White House officials have been adamant that lawmakers must reopen the government, then discussions about health care can take place.
But Trump briefly scrambled that message on Monday when he appeared to open the door to talking with Democrats about health care. He later clarified on social media that he would have those talks after the government is reopened.
“I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” he posted on Truth Social.
One source close to the White House acknowledged that if the shutdown drags on, concerns about the economy could drive Trump to want to make a deal. But the same source argued those outside the Beltway had to feel the pain of the shutdown, and that any issues with air traffic controller shortages or missed military payments could backfire on Democrats.
