Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Democrats need to “dial back” their demands to avoid a government shutdown.
“I’m a big believer that there’s always a way out,” the South Dakota Republican told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
“And I think there are off-ramps here, but I don’t think that the negotiating position, at least at the moment, that the Democrats are trying to exert here is going to get you there.”
But, he said, “we’re probably plunging forward toward the shutdown” with Democrats’ demands to save healthcare funding from cutbacks.
Republican leaders are ready to call the Democrats’ bluff, possibly as soon as this week, with a test vote before the end-of-the-month deadline to keep the government running.
In the past budget battles, it has been Republicans who have been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
This time, however, Democrats, facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump and refuse to fund the administration’s policies, are taking a tougher position — even if it means halting funds needed to run federal offices.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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