Nov. 10 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate plans a series of votes Monday night to try to end the record-long shutdown as House Speaker Mike Johnson called representatives to return to Washington to be there when a bill reaches them.
Earlier, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said they were in a “holding pattern.”
Late Monday afternoon, the GOP’s whip office told CNN a vote would begin after 5 p.m. p.m. John Barrasso of Wyoming mobilizec members for key votes. A GOP aide confirmed the plans to CBS News.
On Sept. 19, the House approved short-gap spending legislation along party lines 217-213 that doesn’t include healthcare subsidies next year through the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Only a majority is needed in the House, but the Senate needs 60 votes in the 100-member chamber.
The Senate is scheduled to go into recess Tuesday for Veterans Day and was seeking to conclude business before then.
Thune said the American people “have suffered for long enough,” and other senators were reasonably optimistic.
“It’s very close,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, who also serves South Dakota. “We’ll work our way through a couple of issues.”
“I’m optimistic, yeah,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott said. “People want to, you know, they want to get — they want to go home.”
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only Republican to vote against past funding bills. He wants hemp farming in the agriculture appropriations bill in exchange for allowing the legislation to move quickly. The Senate plans to vote on the amendment.
“If Rand wants to plant his flag and hold the government shut down for over hemp in Kentucky, take that fight on. I think he’ll lose that one pretty hard,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, noting that another senator wants an amendment to withhold pay from members during government shutdowns.
Monday marked the 41st day of the United States’ longest-running government shutdown, which started Oct. 1. It beat the previous longest shutdown of 35 days, which took place in 2018 and 2019 during President Donald Trump‘s first term.
Despite the pending vote, Johnson further pushed against the Democrats’ battle to extend health insurance subsidies. The Senate would vote separately on the subsidies next month.
“There’ll be long days and long nights here for the foreseeable future to make up for all this lost time that was imposed upon us,” Johnson told reporters.
Senators held a procedural vote Sunday in which seven Democrats and one Independent joined Republicans to narrowly advance a funding measure 60-40.
In exchange for the Democrats’ votes, Republicans agreed to hold a vote in the future on extending Obamacare subsidies.
There are more steps to take before senators hold an official vote on legislation to fund the government through January, including a measure on how long the chamber will debate.
All but a few Democrats have voted 14 times against the House stopgap measure out of concerns over a lack of an extension to the ACA tax credits, set to expire end of December. More than 20 million U.S. citizens currently rely the ACA on for health insurance.
“The American people have now awoken to Trump’s healthcare crisis,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said.
“Healthcare is once again at the forefront of people’s minds,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “People now see that premiums are about to skyrocket. They’re terrified about how they’re going to pay for their insurance.”
The new measure would reverse all shutdown-related job layoffs, guarantee federal worker pay during the shutdown, establish a specific budget process and fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through September.
Johnson said he will give a 36-hour notice before any House votes, but did not offer a specific timeline.
The speaker, who has kept the lower chamber out of session since late September, indicated that a vote could occur as early as this week.
Any bill passed by both chambers will require a signature by Trump to become law. Trump said he intends to sign the legislation.
“Well, it depends what deal we’re talking about, but if it’s the deal I heard about … they want to change the deal a little bit, but I would say so,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in the Oval Office.
“I think, based on everything I’m hearing, they haven’t changed anything, and we have support from enough Democrats, and we’re going to be opening up our country. It’s too bad it was closed, but we’ll be opening up our country very quickly.”
That includes adhering to a provision that would reverse layoffs of federal workers his administration pushed during the shutdown.
In the House, Johnson plans to swear in Adelita Grijalva of Arizona when the members return, according to a CNN source.
Grijalva was elected Sept 23, but Johnson refused to swear her in until Senate Democrats agreed to reopen the government.
Once Grijalva is sworn in, she is expected to become the 218th signature necessary to bypass leadership and force a vote on compelling the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-abuse case.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday that House Democrats would continue to oppose the spending bill that advanced in the Senate this weekend.
“As House Democrats, we know we’re on the right side of this fight, the right side of the American people, and we’re not going to support partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people, and we’re going to continue the fight to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” he said at a news conference.
