President Donald Trump invited nearly every Republican senator to the White House on Tuesday for what was billed as a “Rose Garden Club” lunch. It quickly became a rallying display of party unity as the government shutdown entered its fourth week with no end in sight.
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Gathered under yellow umbrellas on the newly-built White House patio, senators dined on cheeseburgers, fries, and “Rose Garden chocolates” while Trump praised his budget chief, mocked Democrats, and insisted Republicans were “doing the right thing” by holding firm.
“This is the fourth week of the Democrat shutdown, but we are all here today because your Republican team in the Senate is unified,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said as the President nodded beside him. “Everybody here has voted now 11 different times to open up the government, and we are going to keep voting to open up the government. Eventually, the Democrats, hopefully sooner or later, are going to come around.”
Every Republican Senator except Rand Paul of Kentucky (who said he wasn’t invited) attended the event—a sign of how determined party leaders are to project cohesion as polling shows more Americans blame them for the impasse. According to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released Monday, half of Americans say congressional Republicans are most responsible for the shutdown, compared with 43% who blame Democrats.
Trump, whose approval rating in the same poll ticked up slightly to 42%, appeared eager to rally his party’s morale. “In a craven and pointless act of partisan spite,” he said, “Chuck Schumer and the radical left Democrats are holding the entire federal government hostage to appease extremists in their party.”
Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, dismissed the Rose Garden gathering as “a pep rally” and blamed Republicans for not negotiating with his party over extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. “Republicans may not have time to fix people’s health care, but apparently they’ve got plenty of time for a mini pep rally with Donald Trump,” he said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
Three weeks into the standoff, Washington is settling into grim expectation that the shutdown—which on Tuesday tied for the second longest in history—could easily reach the one-month mark before any serious movement toward reopening the government.
The impact of the shutdown is being felt across the nation. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees—including thousands of air traffic controllers—have been furloughed or are working without pay. The National Nuclear Security Administration has furloughed more than 1,000 specialists. States are warning that programs such as Head Start and WIC—which provides nutrition assistance to more than 40 million Americans—could run out of funding within weeks.
Read more: Will SNAP Benefits Be Delayed Due to the Government Shutdown?
The economic drag remains modest in national terms, but the human toll is mounting. About one in five Americans say they have been financially affected by the shutdown, while two in five know someone who has, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Yet on Capitol Hill, the standoff has only hardened. Trump and Republican leaders have refused to negotiate on any other issues until Democrats agree to reopen the government. Senate Democrats are continuing to block the House-passed continuing resolution, or CR, until Republicans agree to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which they say are critical to preventing premium hikes for millions of Americans.
Republican leaders had publicly predicted that last Saturday’s massive “No Kings” protests—in which millions demonstrated nationwide against Trump—would mark an inflection point and that Democrats would compromise after the rallies. But the enormous turnout for the largely peaceful demonstrations appeared to stiffen their resolve.
Some lawmakers have begun discussing potential off-ramps, though none appear close. One involves a short-term deal that would reopen the government while setting up a vote on extending the ACA subsidies separately. Another would lengthen the continuing resolution beyond the current Nov. 21 deadline—perhaps into December, or even further—to buy time for broader negotiations.
But the two sides remain far apart. “Plan B is open up the government,” Thune told CNN Tuesday, arguing that Democrats should first agree to fund the government before policy talks resume. Democrats counter that reopening first would strip them of all leverage to secure the subsidies.
Even within the GOP, the path forward is unclear. Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House in recess, saying his chamber did its job by passing a clean funding bill last month. “Ninety-nine and a half percent of House Republicans understand exactly what we’re doing,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday, insisting that Democrats are “eating up the clock” for political advantage.
“The American people would have an open government if Democrats were not terrified of their radical base,” Johnson added. “The Democrats are not governing in good faith—they’re covering their own tail.”
Republicans are now debating how long a new stopgap might last if and when one can pass. “We’re probably going to have to extend the CR date because the Democrats have held us up for weeks now,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told reporters Monday. “Having said that, I don’t want to go into next year and I am adamantly opposed to having a long-term CR.”
For now, the two parties remain locked in a familiar blame cycle.
“Donald Trump should come to the negotiating table,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday. “Democrats have been very clear that we will sit down with any of them, anytime, anyplace here at the Capitol or back at the White House to reopen the government.”
Schumer added that he and Jeffries reached out to Trump on Tuesday about setting up a meeting to negotiate over the shutdown. Trump, meanwhile, seems content to let the crisis drag on. At Tuesday’s lunch, he touted spending cuts his Administration had made during the shutdown targeting Democratic priorities.
“They’ve really allowed us to do it,” Trump said of the cuts, which included the firings of more than 4,100 workers at nearly half a dozen agencies earlier this month. “Many of the things that they’re cutting, like the New York Project, $20 billion we’re cutting it. They’re not going to get it back… Maybe we’ll talk to them about it. But they’re losing all the things that they wanted.”