Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says he expects the Senate to begin voting at 5 p.m. Tuesday on competing Democratic and Republican proposals to fund the government, but both proposals are expected to fail to advance, putting Washington on the path to a government shutdown that will furlough tens of thousands of federal workers.
Thune said he expects the votes to happen late Tuesday afternoon but cautioned the time agreement for votes isn’t yet “locked in.”
Democrats will bring up their proposal to fund the government through Oct. 31, to permanently extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced health insurance premium subsidies and to restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.
That measure, which needs 60 votes to advance, failed to pass by a vote of 47 to 45 when senators voted on it Sept. 19 and a motion to advance it on Tuesday is expected to fail as well.
Thune will then move to the House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 21, a straightforward 24-page resolution that Republican leaders are describing as a “clean” stopgap funding measure. That bill failed by a vote of 44 to 48 on Sept. 19. The motion to advance it on Tuesday almost certainly won’t get 60 votes.
Senators may then keep the chamber’s floor open until midnight trading last-minute proposals to avoid a shutdown — proposals that would need consent from all 100 senators to succeed.
Thune, however, told reporters Tuesday morning that he’s not yet sure whether he would go that route.
“We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Thune and Schumer have already set up another round of procedural votes on Wednesday on their dueling proposals to keep the government open, but senators don’t expect the results of those votes to be any different.
Thune said that the Senate will be out of session on Thursday to observe the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, but senators expect they will be back in session on Friday and possibly through the weekend to keep voting on proposals to reopen the government.
“We’ll probably set up some votes later in the week but we’ll observe the Jewish holiday,” Thune said.
“I would expect additional votes on opening up the government,” he added shortly after, noting that members will also work through nominations while in town.
Speaking on the floor Wednesday morning, the GOP leader made another pitch for Democrats to vote for the House-passed continuing resolution.
“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.
He pointed out that Democrats voted for 13 clean continuing resolutions to fund the government — proposals just like what the House passed earlier this month — when they controlled the White House and Senate from 2021 through 2024.
That prompted a frustrated rebuttal from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.).
Grabbing the same chart that Thune had used to illustrate his point, Schumer argued that while Democrats repeatedly passed short-term funding bills when they controlled the Senate, they always allowed Republicans to have input into the bill.
“I thank the leader for letting me borrow his chart for a minute. So he’s pointed to each of these bar graphs, percentage of Democratic senators who supported Biden-era CR’s. Yes, that’s true,” Schumer acknowledged. “In each case, Democrats negotiated with Republicans and said, let’s have a bipartisan bill.”
Senators will also have a chance to game out the potential shutdown during the weekly policy lunches. Leaders are expected to address the media afterwards.
Adding another layer to the shutdown tumult, the House is not expected to reconvene until Oct. 7. That means that unless Senate Democrats make a U-turn and accept the House-passed seven-week CR, the government would stay shuttered until early next week.