Chapter 1: What led to the recent Democratic shutdown deal?
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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the story of how a small group of Senate Democrats broke from their colleagues, struck a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown, and touched off the latest civil war inside their party. I spoke with my colleagues, congressional reporter Katie Edmondson and national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher.
It's Tuesday, November 11th. Katie, welcome back.
Chapter 2: Who are the Senate Democrats involved in the shutdown agreement?
Thank you, Michael. I just want to explain that we're talking to you on Monday afternoon after a head-spinning few days of news that could keep changing after we talk to you. And the reason the past few days have been head-spinning is that from the outside, it looked like Democrats were riding really high.
after last Tuesday's election, which seemed to ratify their strategy of keeping the federal government shut down as a way of forcing Republicans and President Trump to reckon with these sky-high healthcare costs. In fact, it seemed to be working so well that in the aftermath of that election, Trump declared that the shutdown was being blamed on Republicans and was helping Democrats.
He articulated that idea. And then Democrats tossed this entire idea seemingly winning strategy out of the window. I didn't see that coming.
Well, I think it gave a lot of people a real sense of whiplash, Michael, because, as you said, I remember standing outside of Democrats' closed-door meeting on Wednesday, and they came out sounding thrilled by what voters had just done in...
Chapter 3: What challenges did Democrats face during the shutdown?
New Jersey, New York, Virginia, which is to show overwhelmingly that they sided with the Democratic agenda here, which was focused on lowering costs specifically. And so we heard from a lot of Democrats, particularly progressive Democrats, that, look, voters have just vindicated what our strategy is and they're telling us they want us to keep up the fight.
But I think what was always brewing under the surface, Michael, was that there was this small clutch of centrist Democrats who have grown really uncomfortable with all of the pain points that have emerged of the shutdown who are looking for some sort of off ramp.
Right. A clutch of Democrats who did not believe that the shutdown was the height of Democratic success. So tell us who these senators are and what they started to do.
Well, a lot of these senators hail from kind of purple or reddish states. A lot of these are senators who really pride themselves on having some sort of bipartisan credentials to their name, pride themselves on working across the aisle. And we're talking about the senators from New Hampshire, Senator Johnson. June Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
Chapter 4: How did the shutdown impact the Democratic Party's strategy?
We're talking about the senators from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen. Angus King of Maine, he's actually an independent, but he caucuses with Democrats. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, of course, someone who frequently finds himself breaking with Democrats these days.
Mm-hmm.
We're talking about Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. And finally and importantly, there's Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who's actually the number two Democrat. He is the party's whip who will not be running for reelection at the end of his term. Mm hmm.
And I think one of the conclusions that they all ended up coming to together is that the chief demand that their party had been asking for, which is for Republicans to vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, was not going to happen. It was not in the cards.
Chapter 5: What negotiations took place between Senate Democrats and Republicans?
And what made them so sure of that? With Republicans starting to openly acknowledge that the shutdown was going well for Democrats, That meant them acknowledging that the health care issue was not going well for them. And what furthermore made these Senate Democrats comfortable with the idea of giving up on the central rationale for shutting down the government in the first place, health care?
Well, I think most of them saw the writing on the wall, saw the refusal of President Trump to negotiate, saw the refusal of Speaker Mike Johnson over in the House to even commit to holding a vote on the issue. And then on the other side of the coin, they saw all of the pain that has been inflicted on American voters ever since the shutdown began.
And I think the conclusion that they came to was, yes, extending these subsidies is extremely important. 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.
Mm-hmm.
Chapter 6: What provisions were included in the deal to end the shutdown?
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?
And what kind of negotiation does this clutch of moderate Senate Democrats enter into with Republicans knowing that health care is off the table?
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.
Such as?
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.
Gotcha.
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Chapter 7: How did party members react to the deal within the Democratic caucus?
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.
Fascinating.
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.
So in short, these Democrats negotiate a deal that pretty much undoes a lot of the damage from the shutdown and preserves this government accountability office that matters to them as an institution that keeps the president in check. And finally, and it seems somewhat significantly, they get...
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of this shutdown deal for future Democratic strategies?
What they see as an ironclad promise that Senate Republicans will vote on renewing Affordable Care Act subsidies, which perhaps they don't think Republicans will, but that would put Republicans on record as not doing it.
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.
I was sitting up at the Capitol and lo and behold, the Senate Appropriations Committee starts putting out legislative text that actually contains the details of these policy wins the Democrats had secured. And so I'm kind of tearing through these bills, right, trying to read exactly what's in them. And it becomes very clear the more that you read that it seems like there's really a deal here.
I think we just have to explain this, Katie, because most of us imagine that Congress is this very top-down place. where decisions come from upon high. But what you're describing is a handful of Senate Democrats a little bit going seemingly rogue and reaching a deal to try to end the shutdown with Republicans, and the leadership of the Senate Democrats is not really involved.
Well, I'm really glad that you brought this up, Michael. I mean, that is completely right. Typically, and especially in the past couple of years, Congress has been a very top-down institution. What we saw here really was a return to sort of a style of legislating that was more common maybe six years ago, 10 years ago.
These were the so-called gangs that senators really prided themselves on being a part of, right? It was the idea that me and my Democratic friends are going to sit down in a closed door room with you and your five Republican friends, and we're going to hammer this out amongst ourselves. And that's really what we saw here.
And I think it's one of the reasons why, again, their sudden declaration that they had a deal really did surprise a lot of people. Got it. And Michael, the other surprising thing about the Senate is that even though it is known for being such a slow moving institution, it can really move quickly when its leaders want it to.
And so it was really not long after these centrist Democrats declared that they had the votes for a compromise to reopen the government that we saw that compromise be put to a vote on the Senate floor.
And I think this was the moment that the vast majority of us, myself included, got clued in on Sunday night just in time for a news conference in which this small group of Democrats goes up to the microphone and tries to explain why they're doing what they're doing and why, in a sense, they have gone around the rest of their Democratic caucus. Can you just talk to us about what they said?
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