‘The problem is everybody wants to win’: Congress bitterly deadlocked as shutdown pain skyrockets

By Sarah Ferris, Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — The government shutdown is on the verge of becoming the longest in US history — and lawmakers still have no idea how much longer it will go.

In Washington, senators left town for the weekend deadlocked and more frustrated than ever, while critical safety net programs could soon lose federal funding for the first time.

Two federal judges said Friday that the Trump administration must tap into billions of dollars in emergency funds to at least partially cover food stamp benefits for the month of November. President Donald Trump said later Friday he’d instructed administration lawyers to ask the courts how it can legally fund the benefits, adding that if “given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay.”

But he noted that even immediate guidance from the courts would result in delayed benefits for food stamp recipients — which could still only be a partial and short-term fix. Tens of millions of Americans are still bracing for a crisis that will leave them without the government assistance they need to eat, heat their homes or take care of their kids while they work.

And after a week abroad, Trump announced his return with a missive that threatens to further complicate the path out of the shutdown: calling for eliminating the Senate filibuster in a “nuclear” move that even his closest congressional allies worry would only do more damage in the long run.

“Right now, the problem is everybody wants to win,” GOP Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia, who has advocated for Trump to get more directly involved in negotiations to reopen the government, said of the standoff in the Senate. “And you’ve got a lot of people really hurting, and that really upsets me.”

“I imagine being a parent with a couple kids, and how you’re going to fill their refrigerator and pack their lunches and get on with their lives when the things that they’ve depended on now is gone, because we can’t even agree to just open things up,” fumed Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who has repeatedly bucked his party and sided with Republicans on the funding bill.

Privately, lawmakers of both parties have acknowledged in recent days they need to find a way out of the shutdown in the next week or two or else face even more dire consequences, according to interviews with a half-dozen sources.

And publicly, many are hopeful that the skyrocketing pressure on both Republicans and Democrats will force the two sides to find a deal.

“There’s going to be a flood of phone calls from people saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, my health care is going to go up by that much?” Sen. Chris Coons, a centrist Democrat from Delaware, told CNN, referring to the spiking premiums that his party has made a central demand in the funding fight. But he said phone lines would, too, be lighting up for Democrats.

“I also think Democrats are going to get a flood of calls from people saying, wait, wait a minute. My SNAP and WIC is going to be…? So I think there will be building pressure on both parties to find a path forward.”

Behind the scenes, Senate and House GOP leaders are confident Democrats will cave shortly after the November 4 elections, several of the sources said. Many point to a flurry of talks with some centrist Democrats to end the shutdown, perhaps in exchange for a vote to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that remain Democrats’ biggest demand in the funding fight, as well as a commitment to full-year spending bills.

“I hope it frees people up to move forward with opening government,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of Election Day on Tuesday, claiming Democrats would be more willing to yield when they’re not “concerned about turnout” in key races in Virginia and New Jersey.

Yet several people close to Democratic leaders insist the party is unwilling to back down for a show vote. After more than 30 days of insisting on a clear commitment on the health care issue, many Democrats will be unswayed by unofficial commitments: They want to hear directly from Trump.

As the shutdown has dragged on, even some Republicans have grown antsy as Johnson has kept the House out of session since September 19 and lawmakers have remained in their districts.

“People ask, ‘Do you like being here in the district?’ Of course I do because I get to see all of my constituents,” GOP Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma told reporters on Tuesday from Washington. “But I also would tell you that we are built to work here. We are all built to be here and doing our jobs and late nights and early mornings and trying to figure out a path forward. And so, it’s a little unusual.”

Many House lawmakers concede they don’t know what will happen if the shutdown extends past November 21, the date of the House-passed government funding extension.

Democrats also pointed to Trump’s late-night call for nuking the filibuster, which injected fresh uncertainty into the situation and raised further questions about the role the president might play in resolving the shutdown.

In a Friday statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said that “if Democrats won’t do what’s best for the American people, the nuclear options will need to be invoked,” though she did not offer a specific timeline. Top GOP leaders, meanwhile, were quick to swat away the suggestion of weakening the custom, while maintaining that Trump and Republicans in Congress were united in ending the shutdown without ceding any ground to Democrats.

That includes Trump’s resistance to any further meetings with Hill leaders, despite constant requests from Democratic senators.

Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, shot down GOP leaders’ offer earlier this month to guarantee a vote on the floor on ACA subsidies in exchange for Democratic votes to end the shutdown, quipping, “I’m not sure that Leader Thune is really the leader of the Senate.”

White House officials have insisted that their stance remains unchanged, and that there won’t be any negotiations until Democrats cave and reopen the government.

“Let them open up the country, and we’ll meet,” Trump said Friday. “We’ll meet very quickly. But they have to open up the country.”

But in the days before Trump returned to the US, aides had privately discussed options for enticing Democrats to give in, including agreeing to undo the administration’s recent mass firing of federal workers in exchange for reopening the government, two people familiar with the deliberations told CNN.

Those conversations were preliminary and did not yield any final decisions, the people familiar cautioned, especially amid concerns that it would hand Democrats an opportunity to claim they won the shutdown fight.

Another suggestion discussed by GOP officials — that Trump invite Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House next week to try to broker an end to the impasse — was swiftly ruled out. One senior congressional GOP aide stressed that it was never a real option.

Still, the behind-the-scenes activity offers a window into the increasing urgency to end the shutdown before more pain hits Americans across the country — and the lingering concern within the administration over which side will bear the brunt of the political fallout.

In recent polling, more voters still blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown than they do Democrats. And while the expiration of food aid has pushed more Democrats to seek an end to the shutdown, it’s also worried a swath of Republicans who represent the millions of red-district voters reliant on SNAP — and are already under pressure over high prices, health care and other economic issues.

“The question becomes, who politically gets the blame?” said one GOP adviser involved in the shutdown discussions. “If Republicans are really feeling the tide shifting on that one there may be a more political imperative to get this solved.”

Within Trump’s orbit, aides and advisers are largely resigned to the shutdown blowing past the 35-day record set during his first term, three people close to the White House said.

Yet they are still holding out some hope that the impasse won’t last much beyond Tuesday’s elections, believing Democrats are increasingly eager to find an off-ramp.

Democrats, meanwhile, insist it’s Trump who needs to offer them one.

“We could end this at any moment, if we can get the right people in the room, and that includes the president. He spent an hour on this, as far as I could tell, in a month. An hour. How much time has he spent on his ballroom?” Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona told reporters this week.

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CNN’s Annie Grayer, Ted Barrett, Manu Raju, Alison Main and Devan Cole contributed to this report.