Thune ‘optimistic’ shutdown may end this week, eyes spending bill through January 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on Monday that he is “optimistic” lawmakers can strike a deal to reopen the government by the end of the week, and he is considering a stopgap spending bill into January or later as the proposed late-November date in the House-passed bill is no longer feasible. 

The GOP leader told reporters that while he isn’t “confident” about the shutdown ending, he was more upbeat as talks continued among a bipartisan group of rank-and-file lawmakers through the weekend toward a potential resolution. 

“Based on my gut and how these things operate, I think we’re getting close to an off-ramp,” Thune said at the Capitol. “The objective here is to try and get something that we could send back to the House that would open up the government.”

Among the items on the table for a potential deal are a commitment on a path forward on the regular appropriations process and a potential vote on a bill to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies by a specific date. 

But one thing Thune said is certain is that any stopgap bill will have to include a new funding date. The package the Senate has voted on more than a dozen times would extend funding through Nov. 21, but time to determine how to fund the government beyond that date is quickly growing short.

“The date’s going to have to change. … That date’s lost,” Thune said, noting that there’s not enough time to pass full-year spending measures in that time and that a continuing resolution lasting into January would make more sense. 

“The longer runway is better,” he added. 

The leader noted that Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, among other places, are also a hurdle that lawmakers believe must be cleared in order to strike a deal, saying that it “seems like that matters.”

He also kept the door open to scrapping the planned weeklong recess set for next week if no deal materializes this week.

“I think we have to leave all options on the table,” Thune said, pointing to the bipartisan talks that lasted through the weekend. “Hopefully that will bring about the desired result, but if we don’t start seeing some progress or some evidence of that by at least the middle of this week, it’s hard to see how we would finish anything by the end of the week.”