The Senate on Tuesday spurned a Democratic stopgap spending bill, putting lawmakers a step closer to a government shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.
Lawmakers voted along party lines, 47-53, on advancing the package, which includes an extension of government funding and about $1 trillion in health care provisions. It needed 60 votes to advance.
The vote came ahead of a second planned vote on the GOP’s House-passed, “clean” continuing resolution, which is also not expected to advance.
The Democrats’ alternative bill, which they rolled out two weeks ago, would permanently extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end, undo the GOP’s Medicaid cuts implemented in the tax cut and spending megabill over the summer, and restore the already allocated money clawed back by the White House over the summer.
Despite the wish list, the main ask for Democrats is a negotiation on the expiring ACA credits, which Republicans have steadfastly refused as part of the government funding push.
“We asked the leaders to discuss it with us in July, in the middle of August, at the end of August, in September. They refused. And now he says, ‘Give us another 45 days,’” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during a back-and-forth with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on the floor on Tuesday morning. “The time to do it is now.”
The vote marked the second time in less than two weeks that the chamber voted on the proposal, having rejected it 47-45 on Sept. 19.
The vote came hours before government funding expires and the government shuts down.
That possibility has been looming for months but has yielded few negotiations between the two sides.
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) for weeks publicly clamored to meet with Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Those calls were rebuffed, with the GOP pair insisting that there was nothing to negotiate on the “clean” package, while noting that Democrats have voted more than a dozen times for one in recent years.
Those calls eventually led the Democratic and Republican leaders to sit down with President Trump at the White House on Monday. But officials emerged without a deal, with Schumer admitting that “large differences” remained between the two sides.
“We stand at the precipice of a government shutdown because Republicans are not serious about keeping the government open,” Schumer continued on Tuesday morning, noting that Johnson has kept the House out of session all week
“That’s why we’re headed into a shutdown — because Republicans refuse to negotiate a bipartisan bill that deals with the health care needs of the American people, which they care about,” Schumer added.
Republicans flatly reject that premise, pointing the finger at Democrats instead.
“We are just 14 hours away from a government shutdown. The House has passed a clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution to fund the government until November the 21st. The president is ready to sign it. Senate Democrats are standing in the way,” Thune said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning.
A number of Senate Republicans have indicated they are interested in hammering out a deal on the expiring ACA tax credits but want to make the subsidies more conservative, including by potentially means-testing them.
They are also insisting that any negotiation over the credits must take place separately from the government funding fight, saying they could be dealt with before the end of the year.
“The Democrat Leader and his colleagues have the same leverage on November 21st,” Thune told Schumer on the floor. “This is a short-term CR. This is what we do all the time around here,”
“We have until the end of the year to fix the ACA credit issue. And we’re happy, as I said yesterday and I’ve said on multiple occasions, to sit down with you to do that,” Thune added, referencing comments he made on television on Monday.
However, a number of Republicans, including many in the House, want them to expire and view them as a COVID-era provision that should go in full.