By Bo Erickson and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Weeks into the US government shutdown, Republicans in control of Congress have begun talking about the next steps in the will to pay the money temporarily until they get an extension of health care funding.
Senator Susan Collins, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans will likely need to extend their government shutdown until November 21.
“There’s a realization that we’re going to have to extend it because we’ve spent all these weeks,” the Maine Republican said, noting that he doesn’t want to see the StopGap money go into 2026.
His comments follow those of the leader of the majority of the Senate, John Tune, who later admitted that more time will be needed to complete the 12 spending programs in Washington.
Tune needs the support of Senate Democrats to win passage of a temporary bill approved by the House of Representatives last month. Republicans have a slim, 53-47 majority in the 100-member House, with 60 votes needed to advance most bills.
All but three of the senators’ Democratic caucus withheld their support for the Republican bill, despite Donald Trump’s lawmakers and enough Republican vetoes agreeing to an extension of the hedged fertilizer tax credit that expires on December 31.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries reached out to Trump on Tuesday to sit down to discuss the shutdown.
“We begged him to meet us, and we said we would make an appointment to meet him, any time, any place,” Shumer told reporters. The senator did not say whether the White House accepted the meeting request.
Without an extension of the ACA, millions of Americans are facing huge increases in their health premiums, which Democrats have called a “health care crisis.”
Thousands of federal workers are furloughed as federal agencies consolidate their jobs on October 1, the start of the new fiscal year. At the same time, the money of the past period has expired of $ 1.7 Trillion in the funds of the Agency’s activities, worth about one quarter of the year.
Trump met with Republican Senators on Tuesday afternoon but they were unable to discuss the ACA extension, according to Republican Senator Mike Round of South Dakota, who attended together. Republicans want to kick off such talks later this year.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also a powerful person, said that Republicans or Democrats are winning a hard-fought battle over reopening the government.
“Right now, both sides think they have an advantage, and as long as you think you have an advantage, there’s no incentive to redial,” Murkowski said.
Hanging over Congress is the prospect of defunding the use-of-funds agreements or another approach that is crippling to many retailers: another year of spending new money that wouldn’t.
“There’s a BiPartisan desire to get something” and avoid that, Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii told reporters. But he added that the first step would be reaching a bipartisan agreement on the full spending level for the 202-year-old fiscal year that expires on September 30.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Bo Ericton in Washington and Maiya Keidan in Toronto; Editing by Ismail Shakil and Maille Lewis)
