Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Oct. 17 reiterated that the government needs to be reopened before any talks with Democrats on health care.
The majority leader said on social media that he would be willing to hold talks with Democrats on “growing unaffordability and unsustainability of Obamacare,” or the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m even willing to give them a vote. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. You name it,” he said in a post on X. “But there’s one condition: End the Schumer Shutdown. I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom. Period.”
Democratic Party lawmakers have said that any plan to reopen the government should include health care subsidies that are set to expire at the end of 2025. Republicans said that the two issues are separate and that any negotiations should come after the shutdown ends.
Since the shutdown was initiated on Oct. 1 after midnight, multiple attempts to reopen the government have failed in the Senate. On Thursday, the Senate rejected a Republican-backed funding bill for a 10th time.
“This shutdown is going to last a while. I think it’s going to be the longest shutdown in the history of ever,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Politico on Wednesday.
When asked on Thursday whether he was willing to intervene in the shutdown, Trump signaled that he is uninterested for now.
“Well, look, I mean, all we want to do is just extend. We don’t want anything, we just want to extend, live with the deal they had,” he said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office.
Later on Thursday, he criticized health care demands from Democrats as “crazy,” adding, “We’re just not going to do it.”
While Congress has been paralyzed by the shutdown, Trump has moved rapidly to enact his vision of the federal government.
He suggested that budget chief Russel Vought would initiate layoffs, and Vought has taken the opportunity to withhold billions of dollars for infrastructure projects and lay off thousands of federal workers. Earlier this week, he said in a podcast interview that workforce reductions could increase.
Vought told “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast on Oct. 15 that he is planning to lay off at least 10,000 people.
“Much of the reporting has been based on kind of court snapshots,” Vought said. “I think it‘ll get much higher. I think we’ll probably end up being somewhere north of 10,000.”
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the administration from firing workers during the shutdown, ruling that the cuts appeared politically motivated and were carried out without sufficient justification.
On Oct. 14, Trump said at an event at the White House that his administration would target federal programs favored by Democrats if the shutdown persists. A list of those programs will soon be released, he added.
“We are closing up Democrat programs that we think that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open again,” the president told reporters at a White House lunch event, adding that a list will be released on Friday.
The programs were described by Trump as “semi-communist” and “socialist,” although he did not specifically say which ones could be eliminated.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have accused Republicans of showing little seriousness in negotiating an end to the shutdown.
“We’re not negotiating in public, plain and simple,” Schumer told reporters on Thursday. “And Leader Thune has not come to me with any proposal at this point.”
Jeffries told reporters on Thursday that the health care subsidies should be extended because their expiration will result in “tens of millions of people” paying more in insurance premiums.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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