Why some Democrats defected to end the shutdown

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0:31The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is finally expected to come to an end. After weeks of holding out, a small group of Senate Democrats changed their position. On Sunday night, they voted with Republicans to start the process of reopening the government. Breaking news tonight, the U.S. Senate takes a key first step toward reopening the government. You are taking a live look at the Senate floor. Senators just advanced a bipartisan agreement to fund the government until the end of January. Here's New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jean Shaheen explaining her reasoning. I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement.

1:11But waiting another week or another month wouldn't deliver a better outcome. It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire and all across the country. But the vote left others in the Senate furious. This is Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont. What this Senate is about to do is make a horrific situation even worse.

1:39From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. It's Monday, November 10th. Today, why some Democrats are siding with Republicans to reopen the government. I talk with national political reporter Liz Goodwin about how we got here and why this funding compromise has Democrats angry at each other.

2:09Liz, thank you so much for joining me on this busy news day. Thanks for having me. So Liz, this government shutdown has lasted more than 40 days. And Americans are feeling it. There's major flight disruptions. Low-income Americans can't afford groceries. Thousands of federal workers are going without pay. But now there is suddenly a light at the end of the tunnel, like a path to reopening. There was a deal that was struck between Senate Republicans and a small group of Senate Democrats. And the Senate has now passed a bill that paves the way to end the shutdown. Briefly, what's the deal? Yes. So deal is almost a glorified word for what this is, because I think a lot of Democrats wanted to get concessions from Republicans on this on health care.

2:56And that is not really part of what's happening now. They're basically just agreeing to fund the government through the end of January. A few pieces of the government are actually going to be funded for a full year because Republicans and Democrats were able to agree on some of these longer term appropriations bills. But you basically have all of these things that are now paused, like paying air traffic controllers, SNAP, food stamps, all of those basic government services would now be funded either through the end of the year or through January. So you're saying that this only funds the full government till the end of January, so they're going to have to have this fight again?

3:38Yeah, they could end up right back here at the end of January if they don't agree to a longer term funding package.

3:48There was also language in the deal about the federal workers who got laid off during this shutdown. The Trump administration laid off more than 4 ,000 federal workers during this time. What's that? Yeah, so they're adding language to these bills that basically say that anyone who was laid off during the shutdown should be reinstated and that the Trump administration should not lay off workers through this January period that the rest of the government is funded. So, Liz, you alluded to this in the beginning of your answer, but, you know, a big reason for this whole shutdown was over health care costs.

4:27Democrats had said, you know, we're not going to fund the government unless Republicans vote to extend subsidies, specifically for people who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. because otherwise millions of Americans were going to see their health care costs go up. So this deal, no extension of health care subsidies, is that right? That's right. The core demand that Democrats had here is when people went to buy their health insurance for this coming year, they wanted them to have these same subsidies that they had last year that made that a lot more affordable for people. And that's something that Republicans just said again and again, we're not going to negotiate on that.

5:05The government has to be open before we're even going to talk about that. And it appears that at the end of the day, there's enough Democrats who are caving on that. And the discussions will have to just, you know, begin again when the government's open and then we'll kind of see what happens. So as I understand it, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he'd do this separate vote on extending healthcare subsidies. And that was kind of part of this deal, right? But just because they have a vote doesn't mean the subsidies get extended. Exactly. This was always the sticking point, is that Democrats said they didn't just want to vote, they wanted a deal.

5:45They wanted Republicans to say, hey, we agree with you, let's extend these subsidies, let's make sure this insurance isn't too expensive for people. They had a little reason to hope there, because sometimes President Trump has said, you know, he doesn't want insurance to go up too much for people, but ultimately Republicans just would not budge on that. So basically, this handful of Democrats in the Senate voted last night to move forward with reopening the government without any assurances for the thing that they had been fighting for all this time. Exactly. They get a vote, but they don't get an outcome.

6:21There's no guarantee of an outcome here. I mean, a lot of Democrats are pissed about that. Very, very upset. Yes. How have the Democrats who voted with Republicans explained their thinking? And who are they? So it's really not a large group here. Jean Shaheen has been a leader in this. She's a senator from New Hampshire. She's a moderate. And she's retiring, right? She is retiring. So she doesn't have a lot to lose here. So she is ready to open the government back up. Her co-senator, Senator Maggie Hassan, same deal. You've got the senators from Nevada, another swing state. Important to note, New Hampshire and Nevada, both purple states, right?

7:05So they are both on board. You've got Angus King in Maine, who's in his 80s. A lot of people don't think he's going to run again. He's also just a moderate. He's an independent. Then you have Dick Durbin, the senator from Illinois, who's retiring. You have John Fetterman, Pennsylvania. He is frequently a critic of the party. He's never voted for this shutdown the whole time. So he's just an outlier. And then I think for me, the surprising one is Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, because he is a little bit more liberal usually. And he's also been in Virginia. There's a lot of federal workers. So that state has been affected, disproportionately affected by the shutdown.

7:43But also people there are very mad at the Trump administration. So they're on this sort of double edged knife on it. And he ended up voting to end the shutdown. We were in a situation where SNAP recipients were suffering and there was no guarantee we would ever get to an ACA solution. Now we've got robust SNAP funding and a guaranteed vote, not a guaranteed outcome, but a guaranteed vote on ACA tax credit. What's interesting there is that Tim Kaine voted to end the shutdown, but the other senator from Virginia did not. Yeah, Mark Warner is up for reelection. One thing that's been interesting in seeing who's for this and who's against this, pretty much everyone who's up for reelection, like John Ossoff in Georgia, that senator, he faces reelection this year.

8:25He is all in on no way. I'm not going to cave. Anyone who's sort of feeling the pressure from voters right now is not doing this deal. Yes. So I think that's, you know, it's been hard to get a read for me on where the politics are, because in the past it's been seen as risky to be pro shutdown. Right. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. And it feels like the lesson that people who are running have taken from this is that it's actually risky to be anti shutdown. Yeah, it's such a like a reversal of like what you would expect.

9:05After the break, we're going to talk about the Democrats who are angry about this vote and how long it could take for the government to actually reopen. We'll be right back.

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10:01I think it's important now to take like a step back and talk about the politics of what just happened to the Democrats. We have talked a lot on this show recently about how, like, Democratic voters have made it clear they just want their elected leaders to fight, to fight back against Trump, to fight for them. So ultimately, Republicans got eight senators who caucus with the Democrats to vote with them. But that still means that, like, most Senate Democrats voted against this agreement. Who's standing out to you in terms of, like, forcefulness in their anger over this deal? So Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who's run for president two times, he's definitely been a leading voice on saying we shouldn't cave.

10:50And he's kind of using dramatic language like cave, surrender, things that make his colleagues look bad. And he's staked that out for weeks now. In my view, Democrats in the Senate must stand with the working families of our country and in opposition to Trump's effort to virtually destroy the American health care system today. Right. So he's being definitely a big squeaky wheel. Then over in the House, I would say Democrats are much more exercised over all this. They face the voters every two years. There's always some House Senate tension. Gotta love it. So you have Ro Khanna, the Democrat from California who has presidential ambitions.

11:34He's saying Schumer's got to go. Yeah. Where is leader Chuck Schumer on this? Yes. So Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, he's definitely the most interesting vote to me because in March when they decided not to vote for a shutdown and he got a lot of blowback, he was with this group of more moderate Democrats who was voting to keep the government open. This time he is not with them. And I think that's really like a political education that he received over this past year. But it doesn't seem to be sparing him that much criticism because his critics are saying, listen, you're in charge of keeping the Democrats together.

12:13We don't really care which way you're voting. You're you're not doing your job of keeping the caucus together against this vote. Right. Schumer wasn't able to convince those eight senators not to take the deal. Exactly. Do we have a sense of how much he was doing that behind the scenes, like how much he was lobbying them to stay strong? Yeah, I think that there was an internal message that they didn't want Democrats to, you know, quote unquote, cave or whatever before the elections last week. So, you know, there were these governor races in Virginia, New Jersey, the mayoral race in New York. And there was kind of a message sent, listen, let's at least let this play out.

12:57Don't sort of blunt the momentum of Democrats by caving on a deal before these elections. I think after that point, there's been less pressure from leadership on to Democrats to hold out. Are Republicans like celebrating? Do they feel like they've won? What are they saying about the deal? I don't think Republicans are celebrating. I mean, this has been a really punishing shutdown for them. Donald Trump said when he talked politically, yeah. And when when Trump spoke to Republican senators last week, he said, you know, I think we lost those elections in New Jersey and Virginia and elsewhere because of this shutdown.

13:36The shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans. And that was a big factor. So there's a sense like internally, I think they've been very divided. I know we're talking about Democrats being divided today. But during the shutdown, there was a lot of confusing messaging from Republicans where some people were for these ACA credits for insurance and some weren't. Marjorie Taylor Greene's been, you know, putting everyone on blast. But yeah, the Republican from Georgia. Yes. And the polling has been tough for them, too. A lot of people are blaming them. Trump has acknowledged that these ACA tax credits are a political liability for them.

14:11They don't want to be seen as the party making things more expensive. So it's kind of a weird situation where I think my take is that Democrats are losing on the substance, but they have won on the politics. And you pointed out that Democrats, you know, they turned out in huge numbers last week during an off-year election to vote in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and Democrats swept all those races. So what is the reaction maybe from voters or others in the party to the fact that they kind of gave up the fight here? I think there's a lot of disappointment and there's a lot of anger. So you see groups like Indivisible, these sort of grassroots liberal groups that are really just mad, you know, and they're kind of saying Democrats finally had the momentum.

14:59Why would this be the point that you just give up. I haven't yet seen polling on actual voters. Sometimes the groups aren't representing how people actually feel. But if you're going by sort of these grassroots groups and lawmakers, there's a lot of anger right now. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of chatter last week that, you know, the fact that the Democrats won so big that the shutdown wasn't hurting them. I mean, obviously, these were races for governor and mayor, so they're not directly tied to Congress. But the fact that Democrats were fighting back was energizing. Honestly, I feel like the Democrats were a little bit like the dog that caught the car.

15:41I don't think they thought that they were going to be winning so much politically on this shutdown because people are kind of scared of shutdowns. They tend to backfire on the party that starts them even if they're picking an issue that's popular. People don't like the idea of closing down the whole government over a demand that one party wants. So it's interesting that it seemed to work on the polling in this case. And I think Democrats just weren't really sure how to get out of it in an elegant way because Republicans were never going to give them what they wanted. Liz, explain that because there were some Republicans who were like, yeah, we don't want insurance to go up for Americans.

16:18So why did it seem that Republicans were never going to cave? So both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson were really united in this idea that if you give an inch here, you're starting a new precedent where the Democrats could refuse to vote to fund the government for any policy demand. And that that could be a slippery slope where you end up in a dysfunctional kind of cycle where they're saying, we're not going to fund the government unless you bring the clean energy subsidies back. And there was just sort of a principle they were standing on, and they were very dug in on it.

16:57I think there was some fear among Republicans that Trump, if he felt like cutting a deal, would go around them and do that and let the health care deal happen. But when it was up to Thune and Johnson, which at the end of the day it was, Trump stayed away. They were just never going to give in on that. So, Liz, we're talking late Monday morning. There could be some more votes later today, and there's like a lot of procedural things that need to happen before the government reopens. So generally, what's going to happen next? And when might we see the government reopen? So the Senate still needs to pass this bill.

17:34They just sort of took the first few votes, but there's more votes that need to happen. They could happen as soon as today, or it could take all week long, depending on if some senators want to slow down the process. So after the Senate passes it, the House would need to come back. They're not here. They would have 36 hours to get back to Washington and pass the bill. So that could happen. You know, that would put us like late Wednesday, early Thursday if the Senate moves quickly. If the Senate doesn't move quickly, it could be over the weekend, even early next week. And then President Trump has to sign it.

18:09Exactly. So, you know, when it comes to people who need food stamps to survive, when it comes to these air traffic controllers who've been working without pay for weeks now, all of these people are going to have to wait for Congress and sort of the slow gears of the Capitol to get moving in order to get what they're owed.

18:33Well, Liz, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

18:39Liz Goodwin is a national political reporter for The Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. Today's episode was produced by Rennie Cernovsky with help from Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Laura Benshoff with help from Rena Flores. It was mixed by Sean Carter. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.

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