A Republican bill aimed at ending the government shutdown failed in the Senate for the 10th time Thursday, leaving lawmakers in an impasse as the expiration of federal funding stretched into its third week.
The resolution failed by a vote of 51 to 45, mostly along partisan lines. Sixty senators are needed to approve any interim bill; Republicans hold a narrow majority of 53 seats in the Senate.
Earlier Thursday, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly called on President Donald Trump to get involved in negotiations between Republican and Democratic senators to break the impasse.
“I think we need the president to get this done, that he needs to engage with Mike Johnson and John Thune,” Kelly said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” referring to the Republicans who serve as House speaker and Senate majority leader, respectively.
“They seem to be following his lead on everything. That’s how it ends,” the Arizona senator said.
The sticking point in passing a funding deal is that Democrats insist that any such bill extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of 2025.
A Democratic bill to maintain these additional subsidies, which about 22 million Americans use to reduce the cost of their Obamacare health plans, is expected to cost nearly $1.5 trillion over a decade.
“The president has talked about how he wants this problem fixed. He wants these subsidies fixed,” Kelly said.
“So he agrees that we should open up the government and fix the subsidy issue under the Affordable Care Act, and that’s all we want,” Kelly said. “So I don’t see what the problem is.”
Thune and other Republicans said they would be willing to discuss whether to extend the enhanced ACA tax credits after a short-term funding extension is approved.
In an interview Thursday with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Thune said, “We’re happy to sit down and talk about a solution on the ACA, the tax credits, but it has to happen in a separate context, you know, away from the opening of government.”
Johnson, in an interview on “Squawk Box” Thursday, said, “It’s not a fight over health care. It’s a fight over funding, very simple. It always has been.”
“They created a red herring. The grants don’t expire until the end of the year,” Johnson said.
“We had always planned to have a debate and thoughtful deliberations on this in October and November, before the grants expired. They know that. They grabbed this issue right at the end of the year and put it off until September to try to pretend that was the problem. That was never the case,” Johnson said.
The speaker also said there would be “a lot of reforms needed” regarding the ACA subsidies, “if they are indeed to be extended.”
Punchbowl News reported Thursday that “there is a bipartisan group of senators discussing several potential paths out” of the shutdown impasse “involving improving Obamacare subsidies.”
“The group, led in part by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), is discussing the possibility of holding two side-by-side votes intended to end the shutdown,” Punchbowl reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
“The first vote would be on reopening the government, while the second would be on a one-year extension of Obamacare’s enhanced premium tax credits, as well as a commitment to enact a longer-term solution by a certain date.”
