Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), navigating the fourth week of a government shutdown, is not out of play calls yet as he dares Democrats to oppose a bill paying certain federal workers later this week.
The legislation, expected to receive a vote on Wednesday or Thursday, amounts to a trial balloon meant to test Democrats’ commitment to the healthcare demands at the center of the shutdown fight.
They have so far rejected a “clean,” short-term funding bill 11 times, with just two Democrats and one independent siding with Republicans to reopen the government. But Thune has begun to get more creative the longer the shutdown lasts, floating narrower pieces of legislation that in any other circumstance would attract broad support.
Thune teed up a full-year Pentagon spending bill last week, an olive branch to appropriators who want to resume the appropriations process, while this week’s measure would pay “excepted” federal employees, meaning those forced to work during the shutdown.
Democrats blocked an initial vote on the defense bill previously on Thursday, and are likely to do the same on pay for federal workers as they demand that Republicans extend premium Obamacare subsidies in exchange for their support.
The resistance has left Washington no closer to resolving a spending battle that began on Oct. 1, when all federal agencies shuttered for the first time since 2019. The votes have nonetheless applied consistent pressure on a subset of Democrats Thune views as persuadable.
He’s been stuck at three cross-over votes, with eight needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster, but dislodged a fourth — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a retiring defense hawk — when the Senate held a procedural vote on the Pentagon bill. She continues to oppose the broader government funding bill, which passed the House a month ago, on Sept. 19.
The vote on federal worker pay marks a departure from Thune’s earlier shutdown strategy. He initially refused to open the government in a piecemeal fashion, as Republicans viewed the political blowback to missed paychecks as something that would lead Democrats to end their blockade.
But the White House has blunted that leverage by diverting unspent funds to keep troops paid and welfare programs afloat.
There are still a litany of pressure points, including the Senate staffers who missed their first full paycheck on Monday, but Democrats have shown no indications they will move off their negotiating position, with rank-and-file senators surprising some Republicans who expected a similar outcome as March, when Schumer and nine other members of his caucus caved to a similar GOP funding bill.
Instead, Democrats believe they have staked their fight on strong political ground this time, using an issue such as healthcare that helped them win the midterm elections in 2018.
Thune did not wait long before shifting his shutdown strategy. His leadership team began weighing whether to offer Democrats a stand-alone vote on the expiring Obamacare subsidies around a week after funding lapsed, something Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rejected as a fig leaf. A few days later came the idea of moving full-year funding bills in the midst of a government shutdown, anchored to the Pentagon funding measure.
Still, Republicans have not abandoned their original play, forcing Democrats to vote on the House-passed funding bill almost every day the Senate has been in session this month. The measure failed again on Monday with no change in Democratic support.
Thune’s strategy stands in contrast to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has kept the House on recess for more than a month, effectively arguing that Republicans did their job and have nothing to discuss until Senate Democrats join them.
Johnson said Monday that he would bring the House back if the Senate passed pay for federal workers, signaling a possible shift in strategy. But he simultaneously cast doubt that Senate Democrats would give them the votes.
“I don’t have any faith that they’re going to pass it,” Johnson told CNN. “I think they’re going to continue to play games.”
Thune, due to the Senate filibuster, has been forced to take a more nuanced approach, using a combination of political pressure and genuine outreach.
He at one point floated full-year spending bills as a viable path to overcoming the shutdown gridlock and committed to funding agencies that Democrats consider a priority alongside the Pentagon.
For a while, Thune also extended Democrats the courtesy of letting them vote on a dueling proposal to reopen the government that includes their shutdown demands.
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But the shutdown, by and large, has been about winning in the court of public opinion, with both sides predicting the other would be blamed for a failure to fund the government.
Thune withdrew the courtesy of dueling votes more than a week ago and has generally framed opposition to each of his legislative pivots as evidence that Democrats won’t “take yes for an answer.”
