Senate votes down Democratic continuing resolution
The Senate just voted 47-53, with all Republicans opposed, to reject the Democrats’ counterproposal to fund the government. It required 60 votes to pass.
The upper chamber is now voting on the House-passed Republican short-term spending bill, which also needs 60 votes to pass and is also expected to fail.
Key events
A reader has helpfully flagged another issue with the White House website’s ticking shutdown clock page.
At the time of writing, while the banner at the top of the screen has the shutdown as having gone on for 11 hours 32 minutes – reflecting Eastern Daylight Time – the ticking digital clock appears to be in a different time zone, saying 10 hours 32 minutes.
Ticking clock on White House website blames Democrats for government shutdown
In an astonishing development, the White House website has had a shutdown makeover to ram home the Trump administration’s claim that “Democrats have shut down the government”.
It even features a ticking clock illustrating how long the shutdown has been going on for. The clock was first launched yesterday to count down the minutes to the impending shutdown last night.
The website further claims “Americans Don’t Agree with Democrats’ Actions” and has a compiled list of statements from organizations that supposedly demonstrate this point.
But bar a handful from conservative-aligned organizations, most of the quotes selected actually don’t blame Democrats at all; they simply illustrate the impact that a government shutdown would have on various organizations and programs – and call for one to be avoided.
The House will return to DC next week, Johnson says
The House will return to Washington next week, speaker Mike Johnson has announced, as the government shutdown has no end in sight.
“Yes, the House will be returning next week, and they would be here this week, except that we did our work,” Johnson told reporters during a press conference this morning.
House GOP leadership decided to cancel planned votes and keep the House in recess this week to put maximum pressure on Senate Democrats to accept Republicans’ plan to fund the government.
Johnson said that he does not plan to call the House back on Friday. “There is nothing truly that we can do much on the floor while the lights are almost literally out here. We have to open the government,” he said.
In short, no sign of movement from either side.
Thune said he was not interested in linking negotiations on health care policy to government funding. “Everybody’s now asking the question, ‘How does this end?’ It ends when Senate Democrats pick this bill up passed by the House of Representatives and vote for it.”
Thune reiterates his view that the Democrats are “holding the federal government hostage to their partisan demands” and says Republicans will not engage on bipartisan discussions while that’s ongoing.
Senate majority leader John Thune is speaking now. He says immediately that “Democrats have bowed to the far left and shut down the government”.
Schumer said that if Republicans worked with them to fix the healthcare crisis, “the shutdown could go away very quickly”.
“That’s what Democrats want, to end this now, fix healthcare now,” he said.
Calling Trump “the most immature president we’ve ever had”, Schumer said that “instead of acting like an adult” and doing something about the healthcare crisis, Trump “is threatening to hurt countless hardworking Americans”.
Schumer said: “When Democrats say we want to work with Republicans to lower premiums to strengthen healthcare, all we are doing is reflecting what the American people already want. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“They want us to sit down and negotiate something that real that takes this huge, huge burden off their shoulders,” he added.
