Republican and Democratic senators Lindsey Graham and Mark Kelly have dug their heels in over the government shutdown – which is now approaching two weeks, with the former saying that the closure won’t push him to meet Democrats’ demands for a restoration of Obama-era healthcare subsidies.
Graham said on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he was in favor of the Senate voting to reopen the government and prepared to “have a rational discussion” with Democrats – but not with the government shut down.
“I’m willing to vote to open the government up tomorrow,” Graham said. “To my Democratic friends: I am not going to vote to extend these subsidies.”
Graham, speaking to Democrats, added: “It’s up to you. If you want to keep it shut down, fine. It’s not going to change how I approach healthcare.”
The senator’s comments came as Vice-President JD Vance warned that permanent cuts to the federal workforce will only get “deeper” as the shutdown continues.
Vance told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures that “the longer it goes on, Maria, the more significant they’re going to be. If you remember, we went nine days before announcing any significant layoffs.
“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance continued.
More than 4,000 federal workers have so far been identified for job terminations. The Senate has voted multiple times over the last two weeks on a stopgap funding measure but not enough Democrats have joined the proposal to reach a 60-vote threshold.
Graham’s comments may indicate a hardening approach to negotiations over healthcare subsidies with or without a functioning government.
“The subsidies we’re talking about here,” Graham told NBC. “If the (Obama’s) Affordable Care Act is so affordable, why, every time I turn around, are we spending $350 billion to keep it afloat?”
The dispute on the network continued with Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, criticizing Republicans for refusing to negotiate with Democrats.
“We need a real negotiation, and we need a fix. We need this corrected for the American people. This is for so many people – their healthcare is running towards a cliff, and if we don’t fix this, it’s going to go right over it,” Kelly told host Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.
Against increasing pressure to reach a deal, with both sides weighing the political cost of a lack of a resolution, House speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that Republicans had “probably a hundred different ideas about how to fix it but we can’t do that overnight”.
He said Democrats’ demands for a resolution to the healthcare subsidies issue without lengthy discussions were “impossible and inappropriate”.
“It’s not a deliverable and they know it,” Johnson said. “They chose that issue because they thought it would sell well to the public and it would show they were fighting Trump. It’s all a big facade and I’m so frustrated by it.”
