Hunger, flight chaos, health-care woes fail to end US shutdown

Republican leader John Thune told reporters on Saturday that the Senate aims to vote this weekend to advance a new stopgap measure that would fund the departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs along with the Food and Drug Administration and Congress itself through Sept. 30, 2026. Other agencies would likely be funded through Jan. 31, lawmakers have said.

A rare Saturday session was spent debating the merits of Obamacare on the Senate floor with no votes conducted. Whether the Senate votes on Sunday depends on when the text is drafted and whether enough Democrats would support it. Thune said there have been some positive bipartisan conversations in the last day.

Thune said he wouldn’t entertain any Obamacare provisions as part of the new bill, however, saying the talks can only happen after the 39-day shutdown ends.

“We are not going to extend this for a year,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on the Senate floor. “We are going to replace this broken system.” Republicans were unable to unite behind a major attempt to repeal Obamacare during Trump’s first term and have not agreed on a comprehensive replacement since then.

Republicans tried dozens of times without success during Trump’s first term to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Republicans’ current stance “a terrible mistake.”

“We are willing to negotiate once the subsides are extended,” he said.

Still, the decision to work through the weekend is at least a symbolic departure from the laissez-faire approach lawmakers had taken until now toward negotiating a deal to re-open the government. Trump, however, didn’t indicate he’d play a direct role in the talks, decamping on Friday to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and issuing directives to Republicans over social media.

Trump repeatedly berated Senate Republicans over social media to end the filibuster rule, which would allow the GOP to pass the bill with a simple majority instead of 60 senators. He also floated a vague idea to give money to people directly to pay for their own health care. He did not mention any appetite to negotiate with Democrats.

“He has spent more time golfing over the last several weeks than he has talking to Democrats who represent half of the country as part of an effort to find a bipartisan path forward,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Republicans say they will only negotiate over an extension to the Affordable Care Act subsidies once Democrats vote to re-open the government.

“All they have to do is take yes for an answer. We’ve offered them a solution,” Thune said Friday. “The president’s willing to meet with them. I’m willing to give them the vote.”

The effects of a shutdown compound the longer it persists. Federal workers continue to go without pay, and contingency funds — used as a stopgap to fund some benefits and pay military members — risk running dry. Backlogs for tax refunds, small business loans and other federal applications build up.

Lawmakers have pointed to pain points — ranging from airline chaos to delayed food aid — that could serve as inflection points to end the shutdown. So far, none of those developments have delivered any clarity to how or when the shutdown might end, inducing more uncertainty about what else needs to go wrong to heighten pressure on lawmakers to act.

Some 24 million Americans are buying Obamacare health coverage at prices multiple of what they paid last year, and even more have yet to receive their November food benefits, which remain mired in a legal battle.

Democrats’ victories on Tuesday only hardened the party’s resolve to stay in the shutdown fight, and federally mandated flight cancellations that went into effect on Friday stranded travelers in some of the nation’s biggest airport hubs.

Political Process

The effects, largely contained to federal workers in the shutdown’s early weeks, are starting to hit a broader swath of Americans. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to cut flight totals by 10% by Nov. 14, a move that could cause chaos for fliers over the travel-heavy Thanksgiving weekend. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Friday said that mandate could reach 20% if the situation worsens. Ground stops for flights were ordered briefly Saturday for major airports in New York and Chicago.

And the budgets of millions of low-income Americans are straining as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamp benefits, are delayed amid a legal battle about funding the payments during the shutdown. Many of those same households are also poised to pay much higher health care costs next year with ACA subsidies set to expire.

The shutdown consequences are costing the US economy about $15 billion a week. And the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the shutdown will reduce annualized quarterly growth rate of real GDP by 1.5 percentage points by mid-November. Consumer sentiment hit a three-year low on Friday amid heightened anxiety about the shutdown, prices and the job market.

But polls show that Democrats, for now, have picked the winning side of the fight.

About three-quarters — 74% — of US adults overall say the tax credits for ACA health coverage should be extended, according to a new poll from KFF Health. About 94% of respondents who identified as Democrats support renewing the subsidies, in addition to 50% of Republicans.

But voters are less decisive about which party deserves blame for the shutdown. About 52% of voters blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the impasse, while 42% say it’s Democrats’ fault, according to an NBC News poll.