ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The government is moving closer to a shutdown. Lawmakers have less than two weeks to agree on a spending plan, and today the Senate failed to get the votes needed for a stopgap funding bill.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
MIKE JOHNSON: If Chuck Schumer intends to shut the government down, I don't see an easy route out of that.
CHUCK SCHUMER: Donald Trump is the shutdown president.
SHAPIRO: That's GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, two central figures in this high-stakes stalemate. NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales is covering it. Hi, Claudia.
CLAUDIA GRISALES, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK, October 1 is the deadline. Congress is now leaving town for a one-week recess. What happened today?
GRISALES: Yeah. It was a pretty tense scene across the Capitol today in both chambers. Republicans hold tight margins. And they were hoping for some sort of major breakthrough with Democrats, but it didn't happen. What we saw first was in the GOP-led House. They passed their stopgap measure mostly along party lines, but it failed to get enough support in the Senate. That's where votes were teed up on competing partisan proposals to extend government funding past the end of the month for seven weeks. But Republicans and Democrats both failed to get enough votes. And 60 votes are needed in that chamber, and Democrats have promised that they would not help. So only one Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, broke with the party to help Republicans, but that was it. And so they didn't help Republicans reach that threshold.
SHAPIRO: This is kind of a replay of a similar fight that played out on Capitol Hill earlier this year when Democrats did help Republicans pass a stopgap spending measure in the end. So why the change?
GRISALES: Well, when that happened, we saw Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer get a lot of blowback from the party's base after that vote. That's when he and a small group of Democrats helped that measure overcome the 60-vote threshold. And his leadership was even taken into question after this. And since then, Republicans have passed a massive partisan spending tax package through a special legislative maneuver. We've also seen two recission packages led by President Trump go through that have clawed back billions in spending, and this time around, Democrats want to see bipartisan talks. They want Republicans to include measures to address all of these cuts in government spending, so just reinstating Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire later this year.
SHAPIRO: This is all so familiar. Congress has been here many times before in a stalemate over spending with a deadline hanging over their heads. How do they get out of it this time?
GRISALES: Yeah, we're not quite clear how they're going to do it. It's quite the game of chicken. Both the House and the Senate already left town, and they're not supposed to come back until the following week. And the House even canceled the session for the beginning of that following week, only putting members on notice to maybe come back if there's a shutdown. I've heard from sources that members hope to negotiate offline next week in hopes of reaching a deal, but that's really hard to do when they're on recess. And these deadlines are really what force many deals when members are here on Capitol Hill.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell what the outlines of a deal might potentially look like?
GRISALES: Well, for now, Republicans are betting that Schumer will not be able to withstand the heat and will fold as we get closer to this October 1 deadline. They're repeatedly calling this a Schumer shutdown as part of that effort. But even if that were the case, it's not clear enough Senate Democrats would step in and help him this time. And after that March vote, we saw many furious with Schumer at how that played out. And this is an opportunity for redemption. Now, Republicans could come to the table to negotiate these health care provisions, but that's something many of their own members and President Trump do not appear willing to stomach. So really, it's not clear how they work their way out of this.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Claudia Grisales covering yet another looming shut down - thank you, Claudia.
GRISALES: Thank you.
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