00:00Well, for some analysis, we can bring in Richard Johnson, a lecturer in U.S. politics at Queen Mary University of London.
00:06Good morning. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
00:10Good morning.
00:11Could you perhaps first just remind us how we got here?
00:16Yeah, so the federal government has to pass discretionary appropriation bills every year.
00:24This is the work of the appropriation committees.
00:27And for the last couple of years, Congress has failed to do this in a timely manner.
00:33And so normally what happens when Congress fails to do this kind of basic responsibility is that there's something called a continuing resolution that's passed,
00:43which basically says, OK, we haven't come to an agreement on new spending, so we will just carry on the old.
00:49And because the Senate operates under supermajority rules for most legislation, you need 60 votes, a supermajority, to overcome a filibuster to pass the continuing resolution.
01:05And the Republicans have 53 votes in the Senate.
01:10Actually, on this, they only have 52 because Rand Paul from Kentucky, on grounds of being anti-government spending, won't vote for the continuing resolution.
01:19So the Republicans need to find a Democrat.
01:22And this gives Democrats some leverage to say, well, we're only going to vote for this continuing resolution if you put in a couple of our key priorities.
01:34And the Democrats have chosen health care to be a ground to fight this on, basically.
01:42And as we often see with shutdowns in the U.S., Republicans and Democrats are each blaming each other for it.
01:48Do we have any sense at this point of who's winning that blame game so far?
01:54Yeah, so normally when there's a shutdown, the party in power gets the blame, or particularly the party that controls Congress is expected to get the blame.
02:04And here we have Republican majorities in the House and the Senate.
02:08And so the expectation, I think, from Democrats has been Republicans will get the blame for this shutdown and will be able to criticize the Republicans for refusing to maintain the subsidies for Obamacare, which are due to expire at the end of the year, which is the main kind of policy ask of the Democrats.
02:30However, the Republicans are basically trying to turn this around and say, look, actually, shutdowns are painful for Democratic voting constituencies, the public sector, cities, those who rely on government activity, which skew, in the Republicans' view, more Democratic.
02:52And to sort of add fuel to this fire, Donald Trump has said that he will use his power as the head of the executive branch, where he has some discretion as to the allocation of certain funds and where he can freeze certain funds' conditions of a shutdown, to punish specifically Democratic voting parts of the country.
03:16So he's announced that he's pulling funds for infrastructure projects in Chicago, which is obviously a very Democratic city, and New York, which, of course, is the city where both the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, represent.
03:33And has that pressure been working on Democrats so far?
03:35Not a great deal yet.
03:41One way that this could end, well, there are a couple of ways this could end.
03:43One is that the Democrats and Republicans agree to negotiations, and there's some kind of deal struck on health care.
03:51The other is that Republicans just peel off enough Democrats to go their way.
03:58Yesterday, we had two Democrats vote for the Republicans' continuing resolution, the clean resolution,
04:04without any concessions on health care.
04:06That was John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Senator Cortez Masto of Nevada.
04:15As I said, you're down one Republican because of Rand Paul.
04:19So there are still about half a dozen Democrats that need to come on board.
04:25And some of those you may be able to get over just on the basis that they don't think shutdowns are good for the country.
04:31They may think that the shutdown is actually not very good for the Democrats.
04:35Or maybe Trump might start to target the states of particular Democratic senators who he thinks might be vulnerable on this issue and might come over.
04:47And so there is, you know, there are concerns that the Republicans will play hardball with effectively people's jobs and lives to peel off a few Democratic senators.
05:01The way you describe it, it sounds like Democrats are unlikely to emerge sort of victorious from this shutdown.
05:08Is that the case?
05:09Well, there is a possibility that the Republicans actually calculate that they cannot get to the 60 line by just, in effect, kind of bullying or putting the pressure on Democrats,
05:25that they do need to make some kind of policy concessions.
05:30So perhaps you could see some kind of agreement where there's a continuing resolution that has some kind of mild incessions on health care.
05:41Perhaps the Republicans make a big song and dance about not providing health care to undocumented or illegal immigrants in the country,
05:50but they agree to extend Obamacare subsidies for lower or middle class income Americans.
05:59I think that's what the Democrats, that's where they're hoping to land.
06:03Another possibility is that they just agree to a shorter term solution.
06:09Basically keep the government over another two or three or four weeks and we'll come back to this.
06:15Maybe another way that this gets resolved.
06:19The longest shutdown in U.S. history was during Trump's last presidency.
06:23It lasted for 34 days.
06:25How long do you think this one's going to last?
06:29It's really impossible to tell.
06:32I mean, it could go for that length of time if both sides stick their heels in.
06:39And basically there is a way where you could conceive of that,
06:44where Democrats think, look, we need to win on health care.
06:50And the Democrats and the Republicans say we need to win on reducing government spending.
06:58But to be honest, I feel that, you know, the last time this happened,
07:02that very long one you made reference to over the winter of 2018-19,
07:06that was over building a border wall.
07:09And that, to me, feels like a more intractable problem than health care, actually.
07:17That I think you put some room for some Republicans to move, particularly on the issue,
07:23which is the fundamental one here, which is about Americans, middle-income Americans,
07:28private health insurance premiums going up at the end of the year.
07:33And that will happen unless Congress acts.
07:37And therefore you may be able to see that you could get the Republicans to think,
07:43well, actually, okay, let's give them a bit on this to bring the shutdown to an end.
07:49I'm not saying that's the most likely outcome,
07:51but I think it's more likely than you were to see on the border wall
07:55and some kind of compromise on that.
07:57Yeah.
07:58Of course, impossible to predict, but it's nice to have an analysis of potential outcomes.
08:02Richard Johnson, thank you again so much for your insight this morning.
08:05That's Richard Johnson, a lecturer in U.S. politics at Queen Mary University of London.
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