‘Make it stop.’ For lawmakers, the shutdown feels like purgatory (but with Thai food)

It is day 11 of the government shutdown. And on Capitol Hill, there has been almost no sign of progress.

Seven times, lawmakers have filed into the Senate chamber to vote on the same two proposals to reopen the government — one backed by mostly Republicans, the other by Democrats. And seven times, they failed to end the shutdown.

Senators say they aren’t even formally negotiating, which begs the question: what are they doing? And what does the stalemate say about the state of the Senate?

“People are really just kind of dug in and everything is hyper-politicized,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., one of two Democrats voting with Republicans on their short-term spending bill.

Most Democrats are holding out for a deal to renew expiring health insurance subsidies. But the spending bills need 60 votes to advance, which means bipartisan support is the only way forward.

Sitting on a bench outside the chamber this week, Fetterman said the endless loop of votes is not what he envisioned serving in the Senate would be like.

“I think people should realize there’s no glamor,” he said.

President James Buchanan described the U.S. Senate as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Ask senators if they think that’s true, and you get a lot of responses like this from Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who laughed upon hearing the question.

“I wish we did more deliberating,” he said.

Even so, Warnock said voting no on the Republican-backed bill in order to preserve the subsidies before they run out at the end of the year is exactly what his constituents sent him to Washington to do. A Baptist pastor, Warnock said maybe his colleagues across the aisle would come around. “It’s never too late to come to Jesus,” he said.

At the onset of the shutdown, Republicans promised more cracks in the Democratic caucus. Democrats said the same about the Republicans. Neither has happened.

“The further we go, the deeper we get dug in. That’s the way I see it,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.

And that can make it seem a little like groundhog day. Reporters have to repeat the same questions. Lawmakers respond with the same answers. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., walked away from one press gaggle muttering, “My god, make it stop.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he does not believe this is what the founders intended.

“If you think about it, we’ve only passed two or three bills this year,” he said. “And that’s not what this institution was designed to do.”

But some lawmakers are trying to keep a bipartisan spirit of give-and-take alive, even if the shutdown talks are at an impasse. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chatted for several minutes on the floor during a vote earlier this week.

Were the lawmakers just shooting the breeze?

“We’re having substantive discussions,” Peters said later.

“There’s a lot of other issues we’re working on as well,” Rounds said. “We’re still trying to do some other stuff besides the shutdown itself.”

Late Thursday, the Senate did pass the annual defense bill with overwhelming bipartisan support.

A bipartisan group of senators also traded ideas over Thai food earlier this week, though Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was tight-lipped about the details.

“I don’t talk about what happens at mealtimes,” she said.

Asked why informal bipartisan gatherings were important, even when neither side seems willing to bend, Murkowski said, “If you don’t have communication, nothing changes, right?”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., also attended, but skipped the Thai food. He said he prefers staples like hamburgers and hotdogs. Mullin said the group didn’t negotiate the end of a shutdown, but did talk about what should happen after it ends.

“We don’t always agree, but we can be friends,” Mullin said. “That’s the benefit right now because we trust each other, so we can have candid conversations and they’ve been pretty productive.”

There have been glimmers of a potential path forward, including chatter about a possible vote after reopening the government to extend the subsidies. Though that potential compromise is still a non-starter for many Democrats.

And tensions seemed to be growing on Friday as the Trump administration began to carry out mass layoffs of federal workers during the shutdown.

But Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Thursday that the repetitive votes do have value.

“Votes tend to be the reason that everybody comes to the floor and then spends time talking to try to find a solution,” he said. “We haven’t found a solution yet, but we’re going to keep at it.”

But the senators went home Friday with no deal and the shutdown now stretching into another week.