As the government shutdown drags into another week, neither President Donald Trump nor most House Republicans are even in town.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has opted to once again keep the lower chamber out of session this week, while Trump is on a multicountry trip in Asia.
Johnson has long stressed that Republicans have fulfilled their role by passing spending legislation. But the measure stalled in the Senate as Democrats have refused to support it because it doesn’t include an extension of health care subsidies that are set to expire.
“The House did its work ... and the most important thing is to get the government open. It’s the number one priority and number one responsibility of Congress, and the Senate Democrats have chosen not to do it,” Johnson said during a press briefing on Monday.
And the White House has maintained that it will only hold talks with Democrats after they support legislation to reopen the government.
“While Democrats shut down the government to use struggling American families — by their own admission — as ‘leverage’ for their radical political agenda, President Trump is continuing to work night and day on behalf of American people,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Our position has not changed, we are happy to have policy conversations with the Democrats once they reopen the government and stop holding Americans hostage.”
Trump has worked to get troops paid during the shutdown, the White House notes, even as experts have scrutinized his legal ability to do so.
As the effects of the shutdown have become more apparent, however, both Trump and House Republicans are facing growing scrutiny for their physical absence, and missing voices, from talks to reopen the government.
Democrats are getting backlash, too, for their refusal to back a clean funding bill, including from the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union for federal workers.
Come November, aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is expected to stall and many federal employees will have missed a full paycheck.
“How can I negotiate? The president is in Asia for five days. Johnson is basically keeping ... the House of Representatives out until January to stop and protect pedophiles. So who am I negotiating with right now?” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) asked during a CNBC interview on Monday.
As NOTUS’s Riley Rogerson reports, in addition to being away this week, Trump has “not personally visited Capitol Hill, nor has he hosted top Democrats at the White House” in the 27 days that the government has been shut down.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever had a shutdown ... where the president was not engaged at the end,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told CNN’s Manu Raju last week. “And so I think that that would certainly help.”
House Republicans have similarly received questions about why they’ve been out of session during the shutdown, when the lower chamber is still able to conduct business like passing bills and swearing in new members. (Johnson, in particular, has been criticized for his failure to swear in new Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona.)
“There’s enough interest on both sides for a deal,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.), a Republican who has disagreed with Johnson’s approach, told NPR. “I don’t see why we’re not talking about that now.”
Johnson claimed Monday that staying out of session allowed members to continue to engage in meaningful business in their home districts.