WASHINGTON — Democratic and Republican congressional leaders were engaging in a game of shutdown chicken Thursday, the day before the House’s expected vote on a seven-week stopgap bill due Sept. 30 to prevent a lapse in federal agency funding.

House GOP leaders were feeling good about their odds of getting the bill through their chamber Friday morning, although they still had a little work to do on their side shoring up concerns about added member security funds in the continuing resolution being too skimpy, at $30 million.

“Optimistic, but not certain,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., responded Thursday when asked for his outlook on passage.

House Democratic leaders were trying to project an image of unity against the bill, though it wasn’t clear that opposition in their caucus would be unanimous.

The chief sticking point continues to be the fate of expanded tax credits for purchasing health insurance on federal and state exchanges, which expire at the end of the year.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., calls that a “December policy issue” rather than a September funding issue, and the GOP mantra throughout the debate has been that Democrats should take a shutdown off the table before negotiations can occur. It’s the same argument Democrats repeatedly made when they were in the majority and were locked in shutdown showdowns with Republicans.

But Democrats have some added political ammunition given independent analysts as well as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office say if the enhanced health care subsidies aren’t extended now, it will be too late for insurers to lower premiums offered for plans purchased on the exchanges for the 2026 plan year.

Open enrollment starts Nov. 1, and the CBO said Thursday that if subsidies aren’t extended by Sept. 30 it will result in fewer individuals signing up for coverage. Depending when Congress acts, the CBO said up to 2 million people could lose insurance in 2026, a midterm election year.

Democratic leaders have offered an alternative stopgap bill through Oct. 31, which would, among other things, extend the expiring tax credit boost permanently and roll back Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation law. It would also restore funding canceled by the administration this year for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

The Democratic alternative, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget think tank estimates would cost $1.5 trillion over a decade, is a nonstarter for Republicans as much as the GOP stopgap bill is off the table for Democrats.

“It’s not clean. It’s filthy,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said on the floor Thursday. “It’s packed full of partisan policies and measures designed to appeal to Democrats’ leftist base.”

‘Dead silence’

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have repeatedly invited GOP leaders to the table for negotiations, only to be rebuffed.

“I would just say we have not heard one word about sitting down and talking about anything … There has been dead silence,” House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said after a morning caucus meeting. “And so, we can’t go forward unless they come to the table.”

Schumer says the offer is still valid, and that Thune could see the futility of continuing to avoid bipartisan talks by quickly scheduling votes after the House sends over its CR on Friday.

Votes could occur before senators leave Washington to attend Sunday’s funeral in Arizona for Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was gunned down last week, Schumer said Thursday.

“We would ask for limited debate and just two votes: the House status quo bill, which delays any sort of health care relief, and the Democratic alternative, which would lower health care costs for millions of Americans,” Schumer said in his floor remarks. “I urge Republican leaders to speed up these votes.”

There was no immediate word from GOP leaders, in part because the House hasn’t acted yet. Thune planned to meet with Schumer on Thursday night to try to hash out a plan for when votes might occur so they could update senators on the schedule.

“We’ll have something to say about that soon,” Thune said after meeting with Senate Republicans on Thursday night.

Congressional leaders are also mindful of the recess schedule, with both chambers slated to be out of session next week for the Rosh Hashana recess.

The following week there is another Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, with both chambers out Oct. 2-3. There’s an unlikely, though attractive, scenario where if both chambers could clear the stopgap bill by this weekend, lawmakers wouldn’t then need to return to Washington until the week of Oct. 6.

More likely, it appeared as of Thursday, was that if the House could pass the bill Friday, then the Senate would be forced to come back late next week or early the following week to wrap up by Sept. 30, which is a Tuesday.

By waiting until just before the deadline, Republicans could potentially gamble on Democrats folding to avert a shutdown, which they wouldn’t do with 10 days to go before Sept. 30. But it’s still a risky move without opening up formal health care negotiations in advance.

That’s why there was still talk of lingering in town on Friday and at least during the early part of the weekend. But it wasn’t at all clear there would be a breakthrough that could send the stopgap measure to President Donald Trump’s desk before next week’s recess.

‘Clear as mud’

“We believe we’ll get the CR by about noon tomorrow, and our leadership is negotiating with Sen. Schumer on some votes,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said after Thursday night’s meeting.

Beyond that, what comes next is “clear as mud,” as Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., put it.

Which was exactly the scheduling situation after a Senate GOP lunch earlier in the day featuring lobster flown in from Maine, according to that state’s senior senator, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins.

“It was discussed at length, but it’s clear as mud to me. I mean, it’s incredibly confusing, so it’s still being discussed among the leaders,” Collins said.

Before and after a Senate Democratic strategy session Thursday, members of the caucus were mostly tight-lipped.

Some members of the group that backed Schumer’s move in March to allow the GOP yearlong stopgap bill for fiscal 2025 to get past cloture wouldn’t comment on how they’d vote this time. But they stressed that it was time for the majority to negotiate on health care.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said she is “still looking at” the House GOP bill and wouldn’t speculate on how she would vote.

“It’s important they negotiate with us right now,” she said. “We have time for that negotiation, and they should be there working with us.”

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., also wouldn’t offer how he would vote, but called the Republican bill “incomplete.”

“We actually have to have some negotiations, and talk about other things we can get done, especially when it comes to health care,” Peters said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said she hasn’t seen the GOP CR yet and wasn’t ready to make a decision.

“There are lots of ways to solve this issue, so I’d like to arrange those,” she said when asked about the possibility of getting some commitment from Republicans on health care.

Only one of the 10 Democratic caucus members who backed cloture in March so far has openly committed to backing cloture on the House GOP bill: Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman.

Democrats don’t have “any leverage” on the stopgap bill, Fetterman said, adding he’ll vote for it because “I don’t think we should shut the government down.”

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