Democrats blocked the Senate from jump-starting negotiations on military funding Thursday, denying Republicans a breakthrough as the government shutdown becomes one of the longest on record.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) peeled off some Democrats wanting to get back to a bipartisan appropriations process, using a bill to fund the War Department to win over Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and two other swing senators in a 50-44 vote.
But the support was not enough to overcome the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster, meaning the Senate will head home no closer to reopening the government over two weeks after it first shuttered.
Thune’s gambit was an attempt to revive spending talks on a larger set of spending bills, as Republicans were open to pairing the Pentagon funding with money for agencies including the Labor Department and Health and Human Services.
But Democratic leaders said they were unwilling to move forward without a clearer idea of what might be attached to a later procedural step. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters Thursday that Republicans were trying to proceed without unanimous consent, a quirk of Senate rules that means any senator can block the Pentagon bill from being linked to other measures.
“It’s always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people,” Schumer said in a press conference with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Politically, the vote threatened to undermine Democrats’ leverage in the shutdown fight as they refused to accept a simpler, shorter-term spending patch without concessions on healthcare. Thune put that funding patch on the Senate floor for a 10th time earlier on Thursday, with all but three in Schumer’s caucus opposing it.
The impasse, now in its 16th day, leaves Washington fast-approaching the third-longest shutdown on record with no end in sight. After this weekend, the only shutdowns that will have lasted longer were in 2018 and 2019, when President Donald Trump lost a battle over border wall funding, and in 1996, when former President Bill Clinton fought with congressional Republicans over spending levels more broadly.
The standoff today centers on premium Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the year. Republicans won’t discuss the subsidies until the government reopens, but Democrats see the funding cliff as one of their only points of leverage in the minority and say they won’t budge without some sort of commitment to negotiate their extension.
THUNE TEES UP DEMOCRATS’ NEXT SHUTDOWN TEST WITH PENTAGON FUNDING VOTE
If Democrats had agreed to debate the Pentagon funding bill, it would have called into question their blockade, with leadership then in the position of negotiating on some spending measures but not others.
For now, the blocked vote gives Republicans another quiver in their messaging war against the Democrats. Republicans note that the War Department bill would have guaranteed troops their paychecks, though the White House has temporarily kept service members paid by diverting unspent funds.