Republican and Democratic lawmakers remain at a stalemate on finding a government funding solution to end what is now the the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The Senate will return on Monday having last week failed to advance bill that would reopen the government until Nov. 21. The House remains out of session this week.
Speaking with journalists on Air Force One en route to Japan on Monday, President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown and resulting air traffic controller shortages.
Asked whether there was a way for the government to pay air traffic controllers as the key employees miss paychecks, the president replied, “Yeah, there is,” though did not elaborate on how those controllers could be paid.
Trump instead pivoted to blaming Democrats for the shutdown and called on Democrats to vote for a clean continuing resolution to fund the government.
“The Democrats can solve that problem with air traffic control,” he said. “All they have to do is say, ‘The country’s open’. We only need five votes. The Republicans are with us. We only need five votes. So let’s see what happens.”
“I would imagine that gets taken care of, not only the controllers, but other people too,” Trump added.
The Senate will convene at 3 p.m. ET on Monday as the government shutdown drags on.
Monday marks day 27 of the shutdown, which is now the second-longest in history. The longest occurred during President Donald Trump’s first term, lasting 35 days through December 2018 into January 2019.
The House remains out of session this week.
The Senate failed to advance Sen. Ron Johnson’s, R-Wis., bill that would have provided pay to some federal workers during the shutdown on Thursday by a vote of 55-45. It would have needed 60 votes to advance.
Democratic Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., voted with all Republicans to advance the bill. All other Democrats voted against it, effectively blocking it from advancing.
Majority Leader John Thune flipped his vote to a no at the end of the roll call, a procedural move that allows the legislation to be more quickly reconsidered in the future.
There are a few Senators who have been consistently voting against their party during the repeated effort by Republicans over the past few weeks to pass a clean funding bill that would reopen the government through Nov. 21. This vote broke differently. Most of those senators voted with their party on this bill.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who has been opposing the short-term funding bill, voted to advance Johnson’s bill today. Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Independent Angus King, who have been consistently voting for the stopgap funding bill despite Democratic opposition to it, stuck with Democrats and voted to oppose this legislation.
Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote both for the short-term funding bill and this bill.
As lawmakers head home for the weekend – ensuring the shutdown will drag into the next week – another week has passed on Capitol Hill with little, if any, progress to reopen the government.
Asked whether there was anything that occurred this week that brings Congress any closer to reopening government, the resounding consensus was no.
“No, none,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told ABC News. “I think we’re at an impasse. I think we’re going to go into November. It’s horrible.”
“I can’t tell you how wrong it is, I think, to make people suffer because of it, and people are suffering,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said. “I mean, I know that in this building, it’s like, oh, this is just a political game. This is not a game.”
Despite the lack of momentum to end the shutdown, Lummis does not believe that President Donald Trump needs to get more involved to break the stalemate.
“I think that this is something that the Congress needs to handle among itself. We know what they’re asking for,” Lummis said. “It’s $1.5 trillion and they want to put a band aid on Obamacare when Obamacare needs to be addressed for its underlying inability to deliver affordable health care. So there’s a lot of work to do.”
