WH Briefing Room: End of the Shutdown? Inside the Senate Deal and What Comes Next

In this episode, Jon Decker breaks down the latest on the federal government shutdown and its ripple effects across the country. From proposed tariff rebate checks to disruptions in air travel and food assistance programs, the consequences are piling up. The Senate inches toward a deal while the House remains divided, and the Trump administration’s handling of SNAP benefits faces growing scrutiny.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the White House Briefing Room for Monday, November tenth.
I'm John Decker. It's day forty one of the federal
government shutdown, and it appears that an end to the
impasse is now within reach. The Trump administration wants to
stop providing full food assistance benefits to forty two million

(00:23):
low income Americans, but a federal appeals court has now
stepped in and won't let that happen. Flight cancelations mount
across the country, and the President takes up my suggestion
and floats the idea of sending tariff rebate checks to
most Americans. But we begin with the federal government shutdown,

(00:44):
perhaps soon coming to an end. Late Sunday night, the
Senate cleared a critical procedural hurdle in its drive to
end the record long government shutdown. Now on day forty one,
enough Democrats provided enough votes to advance a bill that's
designed to end the more than month long impass that

(01:07):
began on October first, the beginning of the fiscal year.
The vote was sixty to forty on a measure to
take up spending legislation that has already passed the House
of Representatives, and it required sixty votes under the Senate's
filibuster procedures. Eight members of the Democratic Caucus joined almost

(01:28):
all Republicans in voting in favor of this bill, and
now it will move forward after more than a dozen
failed votes since September. The next big step for the
Senate is to amend this legislation and then send it
back to the Republican led House of Representatives. What's contained

(01:48):
in this bill will provisions that reverse thousands of firings
of federal workers that were initiated by the Trump administration
since the shutdown, and it also forbids additional firings at
least through January thirty first, when this new interim spending

(02:08):
measure would expire. When this new cr actually expires, the
bill would also ensure backpay for federal workers, after the
White House had earlier called into question whether the money
was guaranteed. Also on Sunday, the Senate Appropriations Committee released
three full year funding bills covering veterans programs and the

(02:31):
construction of military housing, as well as the Agriculture Department
and the Legislative branch. Republicans have already as part of
this deal, guaranteed a vote on extending the healthcare subsidies
by the second week of September. Now, as I said,
eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted Sunday evening

(02:54):
to allow this bill to move forward. Who were those eight?
Senate Democrats? John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was one of them.
He's been the most outspoken critic of the Senate Democratic
leadership strategy to block a clean House past continuing resolution
to fund the government. Also signing on to this compromise

(03:18):
Senator Angus King. He's an independent from Maine who votes
with Democrats. He supports extending health insurance premiums, but he
also expressed his concerns at the start of this shutdown
that failing to fund the government would hand too much
power to President Trump. Senator Catherine Cortes Mastow, a Democrat

(03:40):
from Nevada, also voted for this bill. She's voted for
bills to fund the government consistently since this shutdown began
more than five weeks ago. Her Democratic colleague from Nevada,
Senator Jackie Rosen, also voted for this bill. She has
talked tough throughout this shutdown about getting Republicans to address

(04:03):
what Democrats call the crisis of rising healthcare premiums. The
number two ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, Senator
Dick Durbin of Illinois, also voted for this bill. He
has voice concern over the impact of this shutdown on
federal workers, and he's also faced a lot of pressure

(04:25):
from unions representing those federal workers. Senator Jean Shaheen a
Republican of New Hampshire. She's a senior member of the
Senator Appropriations Committee. She also played a very critical role
in signing on to this compromise, and her colleague from
New Hampshire, Senator Maggie Hassen, also voted for this legislation

(04:49):
this compromise. The key vote I think was Senator Tim Kaine.
He's a Democrat from Virginia. He represents more than one
hundred and forty thousand federal workers in Virginia, and he
focused on getting language contained in this legislation to ensure
that federal workers who were furloughed during the shutdown get

(05:11):
back pay and that the more than four thousand federal
employees that the Trump administration has attempted to lay off
through rifts, reduction enforced notices are actually retained. Of course,
any deal that passes out of the Senate would still
need approval in the House of Representatives. They've been out

(05:32):
of session since September the nineteenth, and House Speaker Mike
Johnson has put his members on notice that he would
give them forty eight hours to return in the event
the Senate passed a spending bill. Now, a key development
that appeared to break the logjam in negotiations was that
Senate Republicans proposed that some healthcare funding be provided directly

(05:55):
to households rather than be used to pay for a
one year extent of enhanced ACA subsidies. This Republican proposal
initially put forward by Senator Cassidy of Louisiana, and it
involves sending federal money into flexible spending accounts instead of
to insurance companies that use that money to offset the

(06:18):
cost of premiums. When President Trump returned from his weekend
in Florida, he said, it looks like we're getting close
to the shutdown ending, and then he said you'll know
very soon. Senate Majority Leader John Thune kept the Senate
in session all weekend in terms of trying to find
some sort of compromise to end the government shutdown. It's

(06:42):
also important to keep in mind that even if it
passes out of the Senate, and it looks like it
may indeed do just that, given the new positions by
those eight Democratic Senators, it still must pass the House
of Representatives, and House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries on Sunday
vowed to oppose this new Senate deal to end the

(07:06):
six week government shutdown. In his statement, Hakeem Jeffries dug
in his heels in his party's position that any legislation
to reopen the government must include an extension of the
Enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to
expire at the end of this year, which would raise

(07:27):
premiums for more than twenty million Americans who get their
insurance through the ACA through Obamacare. Leader Jeffries was quite
emphatic in that statement. He wrote, America is far too expensive.
We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans
that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

(07:51):
We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives,
where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven
week Republican tax payer funded vacation, so some differences of
opinion expressed by leadership in the House from what was
negotiated in the Senate. We'll see what happens this week
as the government shutdown now on day forty one. Meanwhile,

(08:16):
the Trump administration over the weekend ordered states to stop
distributing full food assistance benefits for November to the forty
two million low income Americans who rely on the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance program often called food Stamps but now known
as SNAP. But on Sunday night, a federal appeals court

(08:39):
denied the Trump Administration's bid to avoid fully funding SNAP
for November. That ruling means that the government will have
to make the payments within forty eight hours unless the
US Supreme Court intervenes. The US Court of Appeals for
the First Circuit, in a decision just before me at night,

(09:00):
said that a trial judge in Rhode Island had not
abused his authority by ordering the administration to make the
full monthly payments UNDERSNAP during the government shutdown. Now it
will be up to the High Court to decide what
happens next. The litigation, however, could be overtaken by political developments.

(09:22):
That's of course, if indeed the government shutdown ultimately ends
this week thanks to movement in the Senate and then
possibly movement in the House of Representatives. The impact of
the government shutdown is being felt in airports all across
the country. Flight cancelations have mounted as the government shutdown

(09:43):
stretches into its second month. More than seven thousand flights
on Sunday within, into, or out of the country had
been delayed, According to the flight tracking website flight Aware,
The number of cancelations or flights in the country top
twenty two hundred. Airports including Atlanta's Airport, Hartsfield Jackson, Newark,

(10:09):
Liberty International, Chicago O'Hare, and New York's LaGuardia Airport all
saw delays in the hundreds on Sunday. One of the
primary reasons for that is that the FAA, the Federal
Aviation Administration, has ordered traffic to be reduced at forty
major airports in order to help keep the sky safe

(10:30):
as the government shutdown drags on. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
he appeared on CNN on Sunday, and he said that
cancellations and delays would continue as the shortage of air
traffic controllers deepens during the government shutdown. He said, it's
only going to get worse, and he said, look to

(10:53):
the two weeks before Thanksgiving, and you're going to see
air travel reduced to a trickle. So flight reductions are
expected to continue until the end of the shutdown, until
there's a conclusion that's reached by lawmakers in Congress. In
the meantime, if your flight is canceled, airlines are required

(11:16):
to give you a refund if they cancel your flight,
even if you bought a non refundable ticket or one
of those economy tickets, which indicates you can't get a refund,
you can get your money back. It's not just a
travel credit. Finally, President Trump over the weekend suggested that
tariff revenue could be used to fund payments of at

(11:37):
least two thousand dollars to most Americans. This comes days
after the Supreme Court appeared very skeptical of the legal
backing for many of his tariffs. The President took to
social media on Sunday and he wrote, people that are
against tariffs are fools. We are now the richest, most

(11:58):
respected country in the world, with almost no inflation and
a record stock market price. He continued, a dividend of
at least two thousand dollars a person, not including high
income people, will be paid to everyone. The President did
not offer further details about the payments or who would
qualify for them. Of course, this would ultimately be up

(12:20):
to the Congress to decide whether or not these tariff
rebate checks would go out to American taxpayers. As a reminder,
back in July, actually, on July the twenty fifth, as
the President was leaving the White House on his way
to Scotland, I actually made this suggestion to the President

(12:41):
to provide tariff rebate checks to every American tax player.
Let's listen to what I said to the President and
the way he responded. Among tens for billions of dollars?
Do you take there? The possibility of a rebate to
the American But in terms of all of that money,

(13:01):
we're thinking about that action. We have so much money
coming in. We're thinking about a little rebate. But the
big thing we want to do is pay down debt.
But we're thinking about a rebate. That's a very goods
made a lot of news. We're thinking about a rebate
because we have so much money coming in from pariff,
that tariff that a little rebate for people of a

(13:25):
certain income level might be very nice. Now, the US
Treasury has collected more than one hundred billion dollars from
tariff since the President implemented his tariff's policy Back in April.
He invoked his authority under a nineteen seventies emergency powers
law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to

(13:48):
levy many of those tariffs without any type of congressional approval.
But in arguments before the Supreme Court last Wednesday, the
nine justices on the Supreme Court conservative ones expressed skepticism
that the President has the unilateral authority to impose tariffs

(14:09):
under that law AIPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
A decision by the Supreme Court will likely be made
before the end of this year. As for Monday, the
President has two items on his schedule for Monday. At
eleven am, the President will participate in a bilateral meeting

(14:29):
with the President of Syria that will take place in
the Oval Office, and the President at three pm will
participate in a swearing in ceremony for America's new ambassador
to India. That's Sergio Gore. He's President Trump's former director
of the White House Personnel Office. That's the White House

(14:50):
Briefing Room for Monday, November tenth. I'm John Decker. Have
a good one.