Katie Edmondson

It's a fight worth having.

However, we don't see an endgame here, and it is now coming at the expense of a lot of working people.

And so they begin these quiet discussions amongst themselves, but also with centrist Republicans in the Senate to try to see, is there some sort of deal we can broker here that can give us an acceptable off-ramp so that we can vote to reopen the government and end the shutdown?

Well, these negotiations essentially center on spending bills, right?

Funding bills to reopen the government.

But what they ultimately really become centered around are these measures that Democrats are pushing for in order to rein in some of the actions taken by the Trump administration during the shutdown and also to protect some of the programs that the White House sought to weaponize during that funding lapse.

Some of the big provisions here include a measure saying all of the workers who were fired or laid off during the shutdown have to be returned to their jobs.

Michael, you'll remember that President Trump has hinted repeatedly during the shutdown that maybe he would not give back pay to federal workers who were furloughed during the shutdown.

So they include a provision that says the federal government will repay federal workers for the paychecks that they missed and we're providing you with the money to do it right here in this bill.

And this gets kind of wonky, but they move to protect this independent agency called the Government Accountability Office.

And this is a government agency that essentially is a watchdog for how the White House handles the funds that Congress appropriates.

This is an agency that has blown the whistle on the White House seven times alone this year, saying that the White House has illegally handled money that Congress appropriated.

And this is an agency that actually has the power to sue the White House over impoundment or when the White House refuses to release funds that Congress has appropriated.

And so House Republicans had pushed to essentially gut the budget of that agency and to also revoke its power to sue the White House.

And so in these negotiations, the senators say, if you want our vote to reopen the government, you need to make sure that this agency is safe, essentially, that it has the budget that it needs, and it retains all of the powers that it currently has in order to sue the White House.

And on health care, of course, the senators know that they cannot get a guarantee on a vote, but they do get this promise from Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, that he will hold a vote later in December, an up or down vote, on whether or not Republicans will extend the ACA tax subsidies.

That's right.

What they want, Michael, is exactly that.

They want to put every single Senate Republican on the record on this issue.

And so all of the details of exactly what they had secured started trickling out on Sunday evening.