Senate talks show signs of progress as government shutdown grinds into 2nd month
There has been a noticeable shift in the Senate over the last week, with lawmakers on either side of the aisle talking more about how to get out of the...
By Fox News · Fox News
There has been a noticeable shift in the Senate over the last week, with lawmakers on either side of the aisle talking more about how to get out of the government shutdown . But it’s not blanket optimism and neither side is ready to announce that an off-ramp to the 31-day shutdown has been finalized. And ultimately, how well the bipartisan talks are going depends on who you ask. Republican and Democrat rank-and-file members, particularly members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, have started talking more as the week has progressed. There are talks of extending the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) to allow time to finish appropriations bills, and Senate Democrats are socializing a package of funding bills among their members. JOHNSON WARNS AGAINST TRUMP'S DEMAND FOR SENATE TO GO 'NUCLEAR' TO END SHUTDOWN However, the reality is that Senate Democrats again blocked the GOP’s CR for a 13th time, and lawmakers only got one chance to vote on the bill before leaving Washington, D.C., on Thursday. And Senate Democrats are still largely entrenched in their position that expiring Obamacare subsidies must be dealt with before the government reopens, even with the offer of a vote on the matter after the CR is passed. Senate Majority Leader John Thune , R-S.D., was encouraged by Senate Democrats socializing spending bills on their side of the aisle, but he still contended that given the amount of time it takes to process funding bills on the floor, the best option was to reopen the government. "Unfortunately, doing all that takes a while," Thune said. "Even if you got consent, it still, it’d take a while to move those bills across the floor. So we've got to reopen the government." Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said that his Democratic counterparts were beginning to realize that time was running out to actually fund the government through the appropriations process, which is a generally bipartisan affair in the upper chamber given the 60-vote filibuster threshold. When…