As the government shutdown nears its fourth week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has no intention of giving in to what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wants.
On a surface level, Schumer and Senate Democrats want a guaranteed deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies, and Thune has signaled that he is open to giving them an opportunity to negotiate on that only after the government reopens.
But what he won’t do is strike a deal in secret with Schumer, something he told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that was all too often the case when the top Senate Democrat ran the upper chamber.
‘You know, I’ve been around here when everything’s decided by four people in Schumer’s office,’ Thune said. ‘That’s not a way to run the government.’
‘It’s not the business model that Chuck Schumer is accustomed to, and he likes to be the kingmaker and have everybody come and kiss the ring,’ he continued. ‘And I just think that’s not my style.’
Thune described his leadership style as a bottom-up approach ‘where senators get to be senators.’ That has proven true so far, in his handling of the shutdown.
He’s encouraged rank-and-file Republicans to have talks with Senate Democrats in the hopes of constructing an off-ramp from the shutdown, rather than handing down a my-way-or-the-highway edict.
And from those conversations, an offer to Senate Democrats has materialized on the expiring subsidies that would give them a vote, but only if the government reopens. And that offer comes with several caveats that Thune couldn’t guarantee an outcome on.
‘I signaled to the Democrats that, because they’ve said, ‘Well, we want a guaranteed vote by a certain date.’ OK, I think we can make that happen,’ Thune said. ‘But they also want a guarantee they’re going to win, you know, and I can’t guarantee that. And honestly, even if I could, there’s no guarantee anything gets through the House.’
Still, with an offer for a vote on the table, Schumer and his caucus have not budged from their position. They again blocked Republicans’ attempt to reopen the government for a tenth time on Thursday, and in doing so, guaranteed that the shutdown goes into next week as lawmakers leave town for a long weekend.
A potential complication, too, is Republicans’ desire to make reforms to Obamacare subsidies, enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic but set to expire at the end of this year. In Democrats’ counter to the House-passed continuing resolution (CR), they demanded a permanent extension of the program as-is, which was a non-starter for congressional Republicans.
The Congressional Budget Office found in a report last month that permanently extending the subsidies would cost roughly $350 billion over the next decade.
Thune didn’t dive into specifics of certain reforms he and others in the Senate GOP would like to see, but he noted that reining in the cost of the program was a starting point.
‘There’s no incentive to control costs,’ Thune said. ‘And when the insurance companies are getting direct subsidies from the federal government to enroll as many people as possible, they’re going to enroll as many people as possible, even if those people don’t know they’re enrolled.’
Meanwhile, Schumer has called on President Donald Trump to get directly involved in negotiations after a meeting with the president and Republican leaders at the White House late last month was not enough to prevent the shutdown from happening.
Thune said, ‘I think that happens,’ when asked if Trump would get involved, but he noted that first, the government has to reopen.
‘That’s basically what the White House has been saying,’ he said. ‘The president does like to be, you know, obviously, he is a guy who has experience and wants to solve problems and has experience making deals, and I think he’s probably more than willing to sit down with them, but he’s not going to let them extort him.’