Democrats have shutdown demands beyond health care, but it's hard to notice
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Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Publicly, Democrats aren't saying a whole lot about any shutdown demands outside of health care — privately, it's another story.
Why it matters: Federal workers are pressing Senate Democrats to hold the line in the shutdown, and negotiate protections for their agency's budgets and for workers themselves.
Zoom in: Lawmakers say they are working on it — particularly some kind of guarantee that the White House spends money that's already been authorized by lawmakers, and not "rescind" or cancel that funding.
- But Democrats are just not talking about it all that much.
What they're saying: "Are rescissions part of the conversations? Yes. Is health care the main thing? Yes," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a member of Democratic leadership, told Axios on Thursday.
- "There remains a focus on rescissions and impoundments," Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told Axios in the Capitol on Wednesday.
- Coons added: "Whatever final resolution we reach to re-open the government, in my view, has to include some protection and some understanding that the funds that we will appropriate will not then be taken back through rescissions."
Between the lines: Talking about "rescissions," not a word most people instantly grok, isn't exactly perceived as a political win.
- Many Democrat lawmakers believe that they ran the 2024 election on the issue of "democracy" and lost, so instead they're focusing on healthcare, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on a podcast last week.
Where it stands: Federal workers were at the Senate on Wednesday urging lawmakers and staffers to push for protections.
- More than 6,000 have signed a petition demanding Congress pass a continuing resolution that "reasserts Congress's constitutional powers, upholds our democracy and protects the American people."
Yes, but: Some of these workers, to be sure, are also advocating for the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Democratic senators are insisting upon.
- "I am glad to see the Democrats fighting for it," says Jenna Norton, an NIH employee.
- "But from what I've seen inside the NIH, I know that extensions to the ACA subsidies will be meaningless if they don't come with protections that ensure the White House and the majority in Congress will actually respect that agreement," Norton added.
Reality check: There are millions of federal employees and certainly many want to get back to work and get paid.
The intrigue: But it's still pretty weird to have federal employees — who aren't getting paid and are being threatened with firing — in any way making the case for the shutdown to continue.
- Typically they're out there loudly demanding that the government re-open under any circumstances.
- "I think federal workers are now realizing that, in so many ways, the government has already been shut down for nine months. We are in a crisis that's much worse than past shutdowns," Charlotte Slaiman, an FTC employee, tells Axios.
- She and about 40 or so other federal workers were at the Senate on Wednesday, talking to staffers to thank them for holding the line and fighting for a better deal.
(Slaiman, until recently, was working with FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. Before being furloughed, she was on administrative leave as the federal courts considered whether Trump had the authority to fire Slaughter.)
