After Republican election losses, Trump pushes lawmakers to end shutdown, filibuster

WASHINGTON- As the federal government shutdown drags on and becomes the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in negotiations to reopen the government. But Republican defeats on Election Day could change the situation.

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown “was a significant factor” in the party’s poor performance against Democrats in key elections.

“We need to restore government soon, and really immediately,” Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with senators to discuss what he would like to do next.

The president’s remarks are a departure from his largely apathetic response toward reopening the government. With Congress deadlocked for more than a month, Trump’s attention has mostly been elsewhere.

He spent most of last week in Asia trying to negotiate trade deals. Before that, he focused largely on reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the construction of a $300 million White House ballroom.

To date, Trump’s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been to call on Republican leaders to end the filibuster, a longstanding Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the House to pass most legislation. Trump wants to abandon the rule – the so-called nuclear option – to allow Republicans who control the chamber to pass legislation with a simple majority.

“If you don’t end the filibuster, you’re going to be in bad shape,” Trump told Republican senators, warning that with the rule in place, the party would be considered “inactive Republican” and would be “killed” in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump’s push to end the lockdown comes as voters increasingly disapprove of his economic agenda, according to recent polls. That trend strengthened Tuesday as voters cast their ballots with economic concerns as their primary motivation, according to an AP poll. Despite these indicators, Trump told an audience at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he believes “we have the best economy right now.”

Although Trump has not acknowledged the flaws in his economic program, he has begun to express concern that the ongoing lockdown could hurt Republicans. Those concerns led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibuster, a move that put members of his party in a difficult situation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an “important tool” for the party to control the chamber.

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block “a whole bunch of terrible Democratic policies” when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview Monday on Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show.”

“I shudder to think how much worse the situation would have been without the legislative obstruction,” he said. “The truth is, if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that’s essentially what we would do, we would own all the shit they’re going to do if and when they get the chance. »

Senator John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week that he was “strongly opposed to eliminating it.”

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles do not,” Curtis said in a social media post.

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who refuse to pass legislation to reopen the government that does not include a health care deal.

Budget negotiations are stalled as Democrats try to force Republicans to extend federal health care tax credits set to expire at the end of the year. If these credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums increase.

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by their demands to extend expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to “end the Republican Party’s shutdown of the federal government and decisively resolve the Republican health care crisis.”

“Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime, anywhere,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ letter.

“The election results should send a much-needed bolt to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,” Schumer told the Associated Press.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday indicate he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.

“It’s time for Republicans to do what they need to do, which is to end the filibuster,” Trump told Republican senators. “It’s the only way to do it.”

If Republicans don’t do it, Trump said Senate Democrats will do it the next time they have the majority.

Democrats have expressed no intention of ending the filibuster in the future, but Trump has said otherwise and argued that it was up to Republicans to “do it first.”