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The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Friday unveiled a proposal to end the longest government shutdown in US history, offering Republicans a deal to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of tax credits that lower costs for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.
“Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes healthcare affordability,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Leader Thune just needs to add a clean, one-year extension of the ACA tax credits to the CR so that we can immediately address rising healthcare costs.”
He also proposed “a bipartisan committee that will continue negotiations after the government reopens on reforms ahead of next year’s enrollment period to provide long-term certainty that healthcare costs will be more affordable.”
“Now, the ball is in Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say yes,” Schumer said.
It was unclear if the offer would be acceptable to Republicans, who have insisted Democrats agree to reopen the government before they discuss extending the tax credits, which were established under Joe Biden and will expire at the end of the year.
The legislation would also need to be approved by the House of Representatives, which Republican speaker Mike Johnson has kept on recess since 19 September. That means the 38-day shutdown would not end immediately.
Democrats made the offer as Americans faced unprecedented disruptions blamed by Donald Trump on the funding lapse, which began on 1 October.
The Trump administration has attempted to pause payments under the government’s food aid program for the first time in history, but has been blocked by a court order. The Federal Aviation Administration also slashed commercial air travel, saying weeks of unpaid work by controllers had undermined capacity. About 800 US-linked flights had been canceled as of Friday morning, according to the tracking website FlightAware.
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, any spending legislation needs at least some bipartisan support to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, has tried 14 times to get Democrats to support a House-approved bill to continue funding through 21 November, butonly three minority lawmakers voted for it.
Thune planned to hold 15th vote on Friday. He told Fox News that “we’re going to give them a chance to vote later today on paying people who are working”, but did not say if he was referring to a bill to reopen the government, or to pay some of the federal workers who had stayed on the job without pay over the past weeks.
Democrats had for weeks insisted that any funding bill include an extension of the tax credits. People on ACA plans are expected to soon see their costs jump by an average of 26%, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House that he expected the shutdown to cut GDP growth by approximately half in the current quarter, though much of that will be made up in the following quarter, assuming the shutdown ends and federal workers receive backpay.
Trump has publicly mulled not giving federal workers, many of whom his administration has maligned, pay for the time the government was shut down.
Democrats’ resolve to hold strong against the Republican funding proposal was boosted on Tuesday when the party’s candidates swept off-year elections in a number of states, which party leaders attributed to voters being on board with their demands.
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“Americans plagued by high costs fired a political torpedo this week at Donald Trump and Republicans,”Schumer, said on Thursday.
“If Republicans were smart, they would get the message after Tuesday that their do-nothing strategy isn’t working. Even Donald Trump knows Americans hold Republicans responsible for this mess.”
Recent polls have shown the GOP taking more of the blame for the shutdown than Democrats, and some in the party have warned that backing down from their demands now would turn off newly reenergized voters.
“I think there will be some pretty substantial damage done to a Democratic brand that has been rehabilitated, if, on the heels of an election in which the people told us to keep fighting, we immediately stop fighting, if we surrender without having gotten anything,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy told Punchbowl News.
Trump appeared to acknowledge that dynamic, telling senators from his party on Wednesday that the shutdown was “negative for Republicans”.
He has called for them to vote for scrapping the Senate’s filibuster, which allows the minority party to hold up most legislation that does not receive 60 votes. “If Republicans kill the Filibuster, they sail to Victory for many years to come. If they don’t, DISASTER waiting to happen!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
Thune has said his lawmakers do not support doing that.
