WASHINGTON — Eight days into the government shutdown, Senate Democratic communications directors received a private briefing and a memo from pollster Geoff Garin.
The crux of the message: Stay the course because Democrats are winning the battle of public opinion.
“Voters continue to blame Trump and Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown,” said the memo, which was obtained by NBC News and featured new polling data conducted by Hart Research, with findings that are backed by other public national surveys on the shutdown fight.
It added that voters are siding with Democrats’ health care funding demands, that “Republicans are starting the feel the heat” on the issue and that the GOP’s political pain will worsen “the longer and more aggressively” Democrats litigate it.
The memo helps explain why Democrats are refusing to blink in the staring contest, defying predictions by the White House and Republican leaders that they would have backed down by now.
Republicans need five more Democratic votes to break a filibuster and pass their bill to reopen the government on a temporary basis and buy time for a larger spending deal. On Thursday, the Senate voted again — for the seventh time — on that plan and a Democratic alternative. No senators budged.
Instead, Democratic leaders, emboldened and energized, are taking every opportunity to highlight their central demand: extend the expiring Obamacare subsidies to avoid health insurance premium hikes or coverage losses for millions of Americans next year. Insurers are already sending out notices of upcoming rate hikes in the mail, and bringing costs back down will get messy if Congress waits until the end of the year to act.
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The health care subsidies are used by scores of working-class voters, including Trump supporters. Enrollment in Obamacare is about 24 million, and an estimated 92% of those insured benefit from the enhanced tax credit, which was first passed in the 2021 Covid-19 relief bill.
A KFF national poll showed that 57% of “MAGA supporters” favor extending the subsidies, while 43% are opposed. Overall, 78% of U.S. adults said they favor extending the funding, while 22% say it should expire.
But Republican leaders, facing a divided conference with many members who want to end the subsidies, are refusing to make any promises on the issue. Instead, they say, Democrats must vote to reopen the government, and then the two parties can discuss the subsidies.
The pivot to health care has frustrated House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
“They’re trying to make this about health care. It’s not. It’s about keeping Congress operating so we can get to health care. We always were going to. They’re lying to you,” Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “The health care issues were always going to be something discussed and deliberated and contemplated and debated in October and November.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has referred to them as “Covid subsidies” that were designed to expire for a reason, and insisted on imposing new restrictions on the funding in order to have any chance of preventing a full sunset.
Democrats are refusing to settle for assurances of a debate or a future vote. They say they want an extension attached to government funding legislation in order to win their votes. They have offered their own government funding bill, which includes attached Obamacare funding and repeals President Donald Trump’s recent Medicaid cuts and changes.
Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on a quote published in Punchbowl in which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “Every day gets better for us.”
Thune had a poster made of the quote and brought it to the floor on Thursday. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., made his own poster of Schumer’s face with the quote.
“He said, ‘Every day gets better for us.’ Who is us?” Barrasso asked on the floor. “Not better for the American people. Who does he mean by us? Not the military who’s not getting paid. Not the Border Patrol who’s not getting paid. Not the traffic controllers who aren’t getting paid.”
On the Senate floor Thursday, Schumer attempted to clarify his remarks, arguing that with each passing day of the shutdown, Democrats’ “case to fix health care and end the shutdown gets better and better, stronger and stronger.”
This is now the eighth-longest government shutdown in history, according to an NBC News analysis. If the government is still closed at the end of Friday, it will become the seventh-longest shutdown.
Federal workers, including members of the military, are working without pay and will begin to miss paychecks in the coming days if the government remains shuttered. The direct deposit deadline is Friday, while physical checks are scheduled to go out on Oct. 15; those payments will not occur during a shutdown.
With Johnson keeping the House out of session for a third consecutive week, tensions are running high among the few lawmakers running around the Capitol. On Wednesday, Johnson and fellow Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York sparred with Arizona Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly over Johnson’s delay in seating Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Later, Lawler, a Republican representing a swing district, confronted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., after his news conference over Democrats’ refusal to back the GOP funding bill or a one-year extension of Obamacare subsidies. The debate devolved into a shouting match about Trump’s “big bill,” health care cuts and Lawler’s chances for re-election.
There are some signs that House Republicans are beginning to grow restless and feeling pressure from constituents back home.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a onetime Trump loyalist who has recently broken with the president, has faulted Johnson and her party for having no plan to address the expiring health care subsidies.
And Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., who, like Lawler, faces a tough re-election fight in next year’s midterms, is one of a handful of Republicans who have called on Johnson to reconvene the House. She represents a military-heavy district in Virginia Beach and is demanding a vote on her legislation, the Pay Our Troops Act.
“I’m urging the Speaker and our House leadership to immediately pass my bill to ensure our servicemembers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck while supporting their families, receive the pay they’ve earned,” Kiggans wrote on X. “Military pay should not be held hostage due to Washington’s dysfunction!”
Responding Thursday, Johnson said that House Republicans already passed a bill on Sept. 19 to fund the entire government, which includes paying the troops, through Nov. 21.
“We put that bill on the floor, and the Republicans voted to pay the troops, TSA agents, border patrol, air traffic and everybody else,” Johnson told reporters. “The Democrats voted no.”
Asked about his confrontation with the Democratic senators a day earlier, Johnson acknowledged that “emotions are high” between the parties.
“And so is it better for them, probably, to be physically separated right now? Yeah, probably is, frankly,” the speaker said. “I wish that weren’t the case, but we do have to turn the volume down. The best way to turn the volume down is to turn the lights back on and get the government open for the people.”