Hardly working: Senate heads home with House already gone as shutdown persists and Americans suffer

Don’t expect the government shutdown to end anytime soon – especially since Washington isn’t expecting it to end anytime soon.

House Speaker Mike Johnson warned this week that “we’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.”

Is Johnson doing anything to stop the logjam? Oh, Heavens, no. The speaker has kept the House out of session and refused to even swear in Adelita Grijalva, the Democrat who won a special election in Arizona.

Another sign that the Trump administration has given up? It’s begun moving money around to ensure that troops are paid during the shutdown, buying Republicans in Congress time and giving them one less pain point. Rather than bringing leaders in the House and Senate together to shake hands the way he did with Israel and its Arab neighbors, Trump seems virtually checked out.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune continues to hold Potemkin votes on the same continuing resolution that Democrats have already said is a non-starter.

Once the Senate finishes its votes on Thursday, the Senate will head home, meaning there will be no votes on Friday. It's just the latest sign that talks are not underway and there aren't even talks about talks moving anywhere. And as for the House? It's still out of session.

Democrats insist that any continuing resolution include a plan to salvage the COVID-era enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. That’s a non-starter for Republicans, who say any discussion about health care must begin only after the government re-opens.

But Republicans want to see some serious changes to the credits even if they agree to extend them.

“Getting the fraud out of the program and addressing the Hyde Amendment issues,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who has led talks with Democrats about the subject. The Hyde Amendment prohibits taxpayer dollars from going toward abortions.

That will likely be a nonstarter for Democrats, but Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has proposed legislation prohibiting exchanges from covering gender transition care for people younger than 18 and abortion. Hawley frequently sells himself as a populist who supports expanding health care – even though he voted for the One Big, Beautiful Bill and its cuts to Medicaid – so that shows how much at loggerheads the two parties are.

Republicans also face a larger problem: at their core, they still oppose the 2010 health care law that Barack Obama signed and they have yet to repeal it and create a suitable replacement. Trump’s biggest policy failure during his first presidency came when Republicans failed to repeal the law.

“What's driving up health care costs is Obamacare,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told The Independent. “That's what's driving up the cost of health cost of health care.”

Hoeven said that he wants to see the tax credits more targeted toward low-income earners.

But Democrats see no reason to give an inch. A perfect sign is how Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan are not conceding so far. Both won open seats last year in states that Trump won, but neither seem to be willing to budge.

“The Republicans are not recognizing the fact that they're gonna raise the premiums on 24 million Americans, and I think that's what's causing them to stall out and not really offer any solutions,” Gallego told The Independent.

Slotkin, for her part, is more clandestine about her discussions with Republicans.

“I don't talk about any of those internal conversations – you're talking to a former CIA officer,” she told The Independent. Slotkin said that along with credits, she wants to see a reversal of Medicaid cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill and a restoration of health research that has been gutted.

“I'm willing to, like, accept that I'm a Democrat, I'm in the minority,” she said. “The Republicans have the White House, the House and the Senate, so I'm not going to get everything that I want. I'm a big girl.”

Slotkin flagged the fact that back in her home state, Democrats and Republicans nearly hit a shutdown.

“They yelled at each other over Twitter, and then they finally got in a room and they figured it out in 96 hours,” she said. “So that's what I think can be done here, and that's why it's always good to have those conversations.”

But there seem to be no rumblings of the kind of major roundtables that usually bring government shutdowns or other staring contests to an end.

Absent are staffers pushing carts of pizza boxes into a room for members to begin negotiations. Johnson has yet to take the long five-minute walk across the Capitol to offer Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a reason to stand down.

Expect this to be a long shutdown barring an act of God. And even that might be used as a reason to keep the government closed.