By Nia-Malika Henderson / Bloomberg Opinion
No end in sight.
That has become the tagline of this government shutdown, now the second-longest in history. A new report by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government shutdown could cost the economy between $7 billion and $14 billion. And all along the way, President Donald Trump’s attention has been elsewhere; flying around the world, defending the demolition of the White House’s East Wing for a ballroom and weighing in on gubernatorial races.
Vice President J.D. Vance, who has been running point on the shutdown for Trump, lunched with Senate Republicans this week. But Vance is no Trump. He doesn’t lead the GOP, nor is he as feared as Trump is.
And neither is Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, dubbed Darth Vader by Trump, who paused billions slated for projects in states run by Democrats. He has at times been the face of the shutdown, threatening mass layoffs of federal employees, though his efforts have been blocked by the courts and individual agencies.
Democrats, unusually, have been standing firm. Even after the American Federation of Government Employees, stated that ‘[i]t’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today,” Democrats didn’t budge.
There’s risk here for the GOP, even if Trump doesn’t yet see it. Attempts to blame Democrats, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did in a video that ran in airports across the country, have fallen flat. Republican taglines like the “Schumer Shutdown” and the “Democrat Shutdown” haven’t stuck. A Quinnipiac University national poll from last week found that Americans blame Republicans slightly more than Democrats for the shutdown, 45% to 39%. More worrisome for the GOP: 48% of independents blamed Republicans, with only 32% blaming Democrats. And a newer Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that 65% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the shutdown, a higher share than disapprove of his job performance overall.
A new pressure point hit this weekend, when the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program ran out of money, which would leave some 42 million Americans without benefits unless the Trump administration releases contingency funds. Republicans have already voted down a Democratic measure to fund SNAP, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune has balked at a Republican bill that would fund the food assistance program, although it would likely pass if it were brought to the floor. Still, a SNAP-focused bill would only be a Band-Aid measure. The larger fight remains the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which if allowed to expire will cause the price of health insurance to double for millions.
Thune has hopefully (and naively) suggested that Democrats are “looking for an off-ramp,” but the minority party, and even some Republicans, are suggesting that only Trump can point the way. They are right. Only Trump can get Speaker Mike Johnson to bring back the House. Only Trump can get Republicans to agree do something on health care, a move backed by the public. An AP/NORC poll shows that 6 in 10 Americans are extremely or very concerned about the cost of their health care going up next year.
“I think what will happen is the talks behind closed doors will continue. I really think that ultimately, the leader of the band, President Trump, will surface, and in a really strong way. And then I think we’ll get a resolution of this,” said West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice in a recent press briefing. “You know that when President Trump really, really gets involved it gets involved in a really strong way, we’ll move the dial. We’ll get off this and everything.”
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested that Trump appoint a bipartisan commission of senators who could hammer out a deal on the Affordable Care Act subsidies and, in exchange, Democrats agree to open the government as talks develop. The issue, however, remains trust, something that is hard to come by in Trump’s Washington, where the White House has usurped the power of Congress and Republican House and Senate leaders have made themselves irrelevant.
“We have to be sure that a deal is a deal. If we shake hands over a deal, Congress will follow it. Will the president follow it? We haven’t been able to get that assurance from the president. And that’s not something that John Thune can assure us about,” said Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s up to President Trump to say that he will live by a deal. Thus far, he hasn’t even been willing to discuss a deal, much less to guarantee that he will live by one.”
Re-opening the federal government and wading into details of health care policy doesn’t make for the kind of red carpet fanfare that Trump prefers. It’s a bit tedious and doesn’t make for good television.
But displaying power is one aspect of the presidency that Trump enjoys and employs quite often. He wants to be the savior and the deal-maker. And he has little regard for Congressional Republicans, leaders included. Those are the impulses that point the way out of this shutdown quagmire.
Members of Congress would do well to remind Trump of another tagline: He alone can fix it.
Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.
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