GOP leaders steadfast in shutdown stance despite rising pressure inside party
By Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, CNN
(CNN) — Top Republicans in Congress will take a massive gamble on shutdown politics in the coming days: GOP leaders will not step in to prevent missed paychecks to the military.
It’s the most dramatic step yet by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to attempt to force Democrats to end the government shutdown, even as they realize their party will, too, face political pain for the move. And it comes at a high-stakes moment for both parties: This will be the first time in recent history that active-duty military service members will miss a paycheck on a large scale during a shutdown.
But behind the scenes, Thune and Johnson have agreed that Republicans can make no attempts to lessen the pain they argue Democrats are causing millions of Americans by rejecting the GOP’s plan to simply extend current funding – concerned that if Congress took that step, Democrats would face less pressure to reopen the government, according to multiple GOP leadership sources.
As the shutdown drags into its third week, tensions are rising in the GOP with no clear way out. Lawmakers are angry at each other for getting into now-viral hallway confrontations with Democrats or doing high-profile interviews where they blame their own party for the lapse. Some are angry at GOP leadership for failing to address the military pay issue from the start, or for the optics of keeping the House out of session for weeks on end. But those CNN spoke with expressed an acute anger at Senate Democrats.
“I’m going back to DC. I’ve had enough,” GOP Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, who has raised his concerns with House GOP leadership, said. “I just can’t fathom why we would not be there.”
But Thune and Johnson are publicly resolute in their position and the party remains in lockstep on big-picture strategy: Republicans will make no guarantee on Affordable Care Act subsidies and the only way out of a shutdown is for Senate Democrats to retreat, despite any political pain that the GOP will feel in the coming days and weeks over the missed paychecks, according to interviews with two dozen lawmakers and senior aides. It underscores the depth of Congress’ ugly stalemate, with Democrats equally dug in.
“We’re in a bind as Republicans, but they’re in a huge bind as Democrats,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said, summing up the party’s mood. Even Van Drew, who believes the party does need to take action on the expiring subsidies, was clear that Democrats must be the ones to yield.
Both Thune and Johnson have stressed that Democrats are blocking the military pay. “Well, there’s a military pay bill right here,” Thune said on Friday, holding up a paper copy of the GOP stopgap spending bill. “All they have to do is pick it up at the desk, give us five votes and the military gets paid.”
Inside the upper rungs of leadership, Republicans have been astounded by Democrats continued rejection of a bill to extend Biden-era funding levels and their hardline position on the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. But publicly and privately, GOP lawmakers in both chambers have expressed they believe the public will ultimately support their argument — despite some early polling favoring Democrats — and are prepared to let the shutdown drag on until Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer backs down.
“We think we’re winning this argument,” one GOP campaign operative said, summing up the party’s overarching position.
The GOP’s political bind
Still, it’s not an easy stance for the GOP, a party that sees itself as champions of the military. For many members of leadership, it’s personal, too: Thune hails from a military family, while Johnson’s son attends the Naval Academy. Others in leadership, like House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, also have children serving in the military.
As that anxiety builds, Johnson and his team have fielded a number of calls from House Republicans this week urging him to bring the chamber back into session so troops do not have to miss their October 15 paycheck, multiple GOP sources told CNN.
GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, a former Navy helicopter pilot whose district is home to more than 88,000 active-duty military members, introduced legislation to pay troops in September and the bill has nearly 150 co-sponsors, with the majority of them being Republicans. Kiggans is also one of the GOP’s most politically endangered members in next year’s midterms.
In a statement, Kiggans called on Schumer to vote to open the government and said she has also encouraged GOP leadership to hold a vote on her bill to ensure service members get paid. “I have spoken to Speaker Johnson and our House leadership about this bill since before the shutdown. I have encouraged them to bring this bipartisan bill to the House floor for a vote,” the congresswoman said. “I would support returning to Washington to pass this bill if needed.”
Another supporter of that bill, GOP Rep. Ken Calvert, who oversees defense funding in the House, said in a statement to CNN that troops pay should not be held up by the government funding fight. (Calvert faces a potential GOP primary next year because of his state’s Democratic redistricting push.)
“I will always make the pay and welfare of our troops a top priority as Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee. We can have policy and political fights in Congress, but we simply can’t ask service members to put themselves in harm’s way without paying them” Calvert said. “It should be a red line for anyone who cares about our national security and our troops.”
In a preview of this week’s pain, Johnson was recently confronted by a C-SPAN live caller who was a military wife and mother, urging him to pass legislation to allow active-duty military service members to get paid during the ongoing government shutdown. And some House Republicans are frustrated in the GOP’s message.
“I don’t think it matters to her if you say, ‘Oh well, you know the Senate’s to blame, or Chuck Schumer is to blame. It doesn’t really matter to her or to her children who is to blame, what matters is they’re not going to get paychecks,” Kiley told CNN. “And if we have a way to make sure that they do get their paycheck, then we should absolutely do that even if we don’t solve the larger problem.”
“I’d vote for that in a minute,” GOP Rep. Mark Amodei, a former Army lawyer who served in the Judge Advocate General Corps, said on the prospect of voting on military pay.
But Johnson and his leadership team have held firm that the House has done its job by passing a clean extension of government funding — which included pay for the military and federal workforce through late November. And notably, members haven’t taken any drastic steps to buck leadership and force votes on a bill.
A senior House Republican argued that Democrats merely want a “show vote” in support of troops.
There have been some glimpses of daylight between the two GOP leaders on the issue, however. Earlier this week, Johnson and Thune initially offered different answers on the military pay issue. The GOP speaker did not rule out the idea of a standalone bill while Thune was clear he would not bring it up. That mix-up prompted a brief check-in between the Senate Republican leader and his House counterpart to make sure the two were on the same page, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Johnson has privately said it was just a verbal misstep and that he did indeed support the strategy, one of those sources said.
GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL who was serving in the military when the government shut down in 2013, told CNN that Democrats are “playing politics with our service members’ pay” by wanting a separate vote to fund the military.
“They’re trying to get out of this. But they are responsible,” he said.
In lieu of congressional action, there is some discussion of whether the White House can step in to pay troops without congressional approval. One idea being floated is for the White House to use revenue generated from tariffs, but one senior House GOP aide cautioned that is “a big question mark.”
A dicey health care fight
Republicans also insist Democrats are making a major miscalculation in their shutdown demands.
Democrats have said they will not agree to reopen the government until they have a concrete deal to prevent billions of dollars in those subsidies from lapsing at year’s end.
But Republicans are privately not sure if there will be a deal at all. Senior members of GOP leadership in both chambers are unsure whether any version of a subsidies measure can pass with enough Republican votes. Any deal would would likely require extended negotiations, with clear buy-in from Trump — and Congress is running out of time.
Some center-right Republicans have been vocal about the need to do something about the deadline: They acknowledge that many of those receiving subsidies are their own voters and that the party can’t afford politically to simply let that lapse.
“To get rid of the credits, it’s morally bankrupt and politically stupid,” Van Drew said, adding that he’s spoken to both Johnson and Trump about the issue. “We do need to do something.”
But he acknowledged the fight will be “messy” — and that the longer Democrats refuse to back the spending bill, the less time they have to find a resolution.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York is another center-right Republican who is in favor of extending the subsidies in some fashion. But the Long Island Republican said she — and the rest of the party — won’t support a simple extension as the Democrats are demanding.
“This is really their mess. I think Republicans need to work with them to clean up their mess. But it needs to be something that’s comprehensive and reins in the insurance companies,” Malliotakis said. “It fell in our lap. There’s bipartisan support to do something here. If we open the government, we’ll be able to come to that resolution.”
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CNN’s Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.
