Congress Deadlocked As Possible Government Shutdown Looms

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Danielle Kurtz Liebanne.

I cover the White House.

I'm Deirdre Walsh.

I cover Congress.

And I'm Mara Lyason, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And today on the show, the federal government is headed again towards a shutdown, this time on October 1st, unless Congress acts to prevent it.

So we have a lot to get into here.

It feels like there's a new shutdown threat once or twice a year, at least at this point.

Mara, let's start with you.

And I want us to zoom out for a moment.

Tell us, what is a government shutdown exactly and how do people experience it?

Well, that's a really good question because government shutdowns have changed over the years and how people experience them have changed.

In other words, the government does not grind to a halt.

There are a whole bunch of things that are deemed essential services, like social security checks, air traffic control, border protection, in-hospital medical care, power grid maintenance.

All of those things in past shutdowns have been deemed essential.

So the big question for the government shutdown is how people do experience it.

Now, they might not be able to go to their favorite national park, but they're still going to get their social security check, and they might not notice much.

Okay, so Deirdre, practically speaking, what would this shutdown look like if it happened?

So, as Mara mentioned, there are a lot of functions of the government that are deemed essential.

Those would go on.

We would still see social security checks go out.

We would still see border security functions move forward.

But, you know, federal workers would not be getting paid.

People who work for the TSA would not be getting paid.

The last time there was a shutdown, some of them didn't show up for work.

Flights were delayed.

Something like that could happen again.

There are

some people who represent areas of North Carolina that are recovering from Hurricane Helene, and they are worrying about the FEMA efforts in their state continuing in the event of a shutdown.

Would it slow down?

Would they stop?

You know, there are some veterans programs that wouldn't be accessible during a shutdown.

There could be an economic impact if it lasts for some time.

I mean, the last shutdown in 2018, when Trump was president in his first term, I think was the longest government shutdown and lasted about 35 days.

And at the time, the CBO did analysis and said there was an impact to the economy.

There was a, I think, an $11 billion

cost to the economy.

So it's not something that will be the same everywhere.

Some parts of the country may have more of an impact.

Right.

Not everyone would feel it, but some people would feel it very acutely.

Exactly.

Gotcha.

Well, so, Deirdre, where do negotiations over a government funding bill stand currently?

Pretty much they're non-existent right now.

I mean, we're, I guess, about eight days away from the deadline, which is kind of an eternity when it comes to Congress.

You know, some things can change at the last minute and things can move quickly.

But right now, there's a real standoff, and there are really no signs that either side side sees any political upside to changing their posture.

So I think it's, you know, we are heading towards a shutdown.

Sometimes it takes getting to a shutdown to getting to a deal to get out of it.

I think the sort of X factor right now is that after the Senate failed to pass the bill that the House passed last week and both the House and Senate left town for recess, the top Democrats yesterday, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, pressed for a meeting with President Trump to negotiate with him directly.

It seems like there is an effort to make that meeting happen this week.

I don't know what could come out of it.

But at this stage, I think both sides are very stuck in their corners and don't really want to back down.

And what's so interesting about the president's approach to this, and of course Donald Trump does change his mind a lot, that's kind of his signature style.

But at first he said he didn't want any negotiations with Democrats.

They were such bad people.

Right.

And he even even said that we are only going to work with Republicans, which mathematically is just impossible.

But then, over the weekend, he said he would love to meet with Democrats.

He just doesn't think anything will come of it.

Right.

And speaking of it being mathematically impossible, remind us.

Republicans have control of the House.

They passed a funding bill there.

And the Republicans have control of the Senate.

Why haven't they been able to pass a funding bill there?

Because you need 60 votes to advance a bill in the Senate.

And Republicans have a 53-seat majority.

They actually lost a couple of their own members on the vote last week to pass the House version of the bill.

So they don't have the votes to advance anything.

And I think the president's newfound willingness to maybe meet with Democrats might be because he understands the math.

But there are no signs right now that there are seven Democrats willing to cross their party to help Republicans pass a government funding bill.

There is one, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, who voted with Republicans on the House-passed bill.

But this is a very big change in strategy that Democrats have in September that they had in March.

In March, there was a group of Senate Democrats that were willing to work with Republicans to pass sort of a longer version of a continuing resolution to keep the government open.

And the calculation then was that the damage would be worse if they didn't help Republicans keep the government open.

You mean political damage or economic damage?

The argument from the top Democrat, Senator Chuck Schumer, was that more damage would be done to the economy, to federal workers, to programs that Democrats care about if they allowed a shutdown to happen.

Now he has a completely different position and is saying basically, look, Republicans have been cutting government on their own through this Doge effort.

They're laying off federal workers.

They're disregarding funding bills that Congress has passed by clawing back money.

And so he's like, why should we work with Republicans now?

Because they're not actually obeying the law that Congress passed the last time they passed a funding bill.

Also, the politics for Chuck Schumer are really, I think, the driving force here.

He received such.

blowback from the Democratic base for helping Republicans keep the government open last time.

And the Democratic base is very angry with Democrats who cooperate with the Trump administration, and they want a fight.

And so what Schumer and Jeffries did this time is instead of being in separate strategies last time, they are joined at the hip and they are constantly putting out letters together, standing with each other, saying that they are going to fight.

And what's so interesting about this is that we are at a moment where the bipartisanship, the need for bipartisanship that was baked into the system by the founders because they wanted to get buy-in from both parties is really almost completely breaking down.

And you have Russ Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, saying he thought there was just too much bipartisanship in the appropriations process.

You have the president saying over and over again, I don't want to negotiate with Democrats.

We can just do this with Republicans.

And I don't think that the filibuster, the requirement that 60 votes are needed to pass certain kinds of legislation, is going to last.

But it's an extraordinary moment because the system still can only work with 60 votes in the Senate.

Republicans don't have that, but they also seem completely unwilling to make a compromise.

Well, speaking of compromise, what exactly do Democrats want in exchange for their support for a funding bill?

Well, Democrats put out their own version of a spending bill last week, and instead of funding the government through November 21st, they funded it through October 31st.

They

proposed rolling back all of the Medicaid changes that were part of the big Republican tax bill that the President signed.

They

want to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are going to expire at the end of December.

They put in provisions that barred the Office of Management budget from clawing back any money and requiring that the government actually fund the programs that Congress has already funded.

These are all sort of demands that are non-starters for Republicans.

They're not going to undo the core piece of their tax bill.

The one issue that I think this whole funding debate comes down to is health care.

And we've been here before, there have been big standoffs tied to government funding bills over health care.

There was a shutdown in 2013 over Obamacare.

This time around, it's different because there is bipartisan support for making health care more affordable with these tax credits that are part of the Affordable Care Act.

And there's actually a study that Democrats point to that came out last week: that more people in red states benefit from these ACA ACA subsidies than people in blue states.

Wow.

But that doesn't mean they're going to reward Democrats for keeping them.

This is the trap that Democrats have fallen into every single time.

If they do hold out for these subsidies to be extended and the subsidies are extended, they might just be helping Republicans hang on to the House.

All right, we have a lot more to talk about.

We're going to take a quick break, more in a moment.

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and we're back we've been talking about efforts or lack thereof in Congress to avert a government shutdown deirdrew I want to come back to you you were talking about the two parties

very different positions There's just a wide abyss between the two.

How united are Democrats in their position and how united are Republicans?

I think both parties are very united.

You can see from the vote last week that few Democrats helped Republicans pass their bill, one in the House, one in the Senate, and Republicans lost a couple of Republican senators on the vote to advance the House bill.

And I don't see that changing.

I think the political dynamics, as we've been talking about, are driving this.

I think most lawmakers that I talked to last week sort of were already saying, like, we expect to end up in a shutdown.

And then it just gets into a who's to blame argument.

And that's already sort of where the debate is now.

You see Republicans calling it the Schumer shutdown.

You see Democrats say, look, Republicans are in charge of the House, the Senate, the White House.

If the government shuts down, it's on them.

But I do think that the political dynamics are different than we've seen in past shutdowns.

And I don't know that we know who will end up getting the blame if we end up in any sort of long-term shutdown.

Well, Mara, let me ask your opinion on that.

Who would get blamed here?

Well, that's the interesting question, because in the past, the rule of thumb was the party that is in charge, that has the White House, is responsible for the functioning, the execution of the federal government, and they would be the ones who would get blamed.

So even when Republicans in Congress would spark a shutdown, it would be the Democrat in the White House who would suffer politically.

Now, that might not happen this time.

Don't forget, we're in a whole new era.

Donald Trump has fired tens of thousands of government workers.

He has said, along with his former associate, Elon Musk, that there were many, many, many parts of the government that we could just do without.

So I don't know if Republicans see a government shutdown as that bad for them politically.

The other thing that used to be operative politically is that Democrats are the party that believes government can help people.

And Republicans were the party that traditionally thought government was a problem.

So a lot of Democrats are very leery about this.

The base definitely wants their leaders to fight.

And why not have a government shutdown?

President Trump is already kind of dismantling the government as it is.

But some Democrats are worried that they still will get blamed, partially because the right has such a better and bigger message machine than they do, putting aside whether the Democrats have a better message.

So you both have hinted at this already, and I want to crystallize this, this idea that this is a different shutdown.

That, yeah, we've had a lot of other shutdowns and shutdown fights, but that this time is different.

Why is that?

Maybe let's start with you, Mara.

This shutdown is different because the Trump era is so different.

Our form of government is changing before our eyes.

We're getting a much more all-powerful executive.

The other two branches of government don't look very co-equal anymore.

The Republican Congress has pretty much ceded its constitutional prerogatives to the president.

So I think it's really different.

Now, if we get a shutdown and there are no political repercussions, I think that will be a huge marker along the slippery slope of democratic decline, little D democratic decline, because then that means that members of Congress will not have any compunction about shutting the government because it just doesn't matter to most people.

Yeah.

And what does it say about Congress if that happens and there's no blowback?

I mean, it's Congress's job to have the power of the purse.

It's like a fundamental basic thing.

You pass spending bills, you fund government programs.

They have shown no ability to do that over years and years, right?

That's why we keep having these discussions about government shutdowns under Democratic presidents, under Republican presidents, in divided government.

Congress doesn't have its act together and can't get its act together to pass spending bills, sort of a basic fashion way, appropriations where each agency is funded by Congress.

That doesn't happen.

That's why we get these big mega CRs and government shutdown threats because, yeah, because Congress has failed.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And I think it gets back to a theme that our podcast audience is probably familiar with is just the polarization in our government.

There's not a lot of incentive structure anymore for those kinds of bipartisan spending bill deals.

Like I give you your bridge, you give me your water project.

We all have something in this bill that we want to support that helps our constituents back home.

Let's pass it and let's like move on to the next funding bill for the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security.

That doesn't really happen.

It's been that way for a while.

This time is sort of more of the same, but I think on steroids because of the polarization and the bases of both parties basically telling their political supporters, like, we don't want you to compromise.

Compromise is a dirty word.

I don't think it's just the two bases demanding this.

It certainly is the Democratic base demanding that their leaders get off the mat and fight.

But for Republicans, this is being led by the Trump administration.

Republican voters didn't vote to make the appropriations process less bipartisan.

They voted for lower inflation and a secure border.

But when you hear Russ Vogt, the director of OMB, say he considers each appropriations bill a ceiling, but not a floor.

In other words, it tells you that we can't spend more than this amount of money, but we can spend much less on this particular government function or zero.

I mean, he has a whole different view of the executive's power over the power of the purse.

And because Congress can't work together to push back at that, the executive branch by default is basically running the show.

Wait, I have one more question here because, Mario, you talked about the Democratic base wanting Democratic legislators to get up off the mat, as you put it.

If the Democrats do allow this shutdown to happen, what would they need to do to consider it a political win?

Well, first of all, to allow it to happen, I mean, that would mean that the Republicans have already run by blaming them for it happening.

What Democrats will say is, we fought to protect your health care.

We fought to protect your Medicaid and they're fighting for billionaires.

I mean, it would be the same fight that Democrats and Republicans have had from time immemorial.

I mean, the question is, can they be successful in that?

Every other time they've tried, it works for a couple weeks or days and then they cave.

All right, well, we're going to leave it there today.

I am Danielle Kurtz-Laban.

I cover the White House.

I'm Deirdre Walsh.

I cover Congress.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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