WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in the halls of the Capitol Tuesday that Congress will likely vote to open the government by Friday.
Mullin told a quorum of reporters he’s “pretty confident” Congress will reopen the government this week, and while he said he was making “assumptions,” he thinks the vote will happen either Thursday or be pushed until Friday. If the Senate acts Thursday, assuming the date of the CR is extended past Nov. 21, the House will return as soon as Saturday, since the House will get 48 hours notice to return to Washington.
With elections occurring Tuesday in several states and New York City, the Oklahoma Republican suspects Democrats will be encouraged by their leaders to go ahead and vote to reopen the government afterward, Mullin added.
As of Tuesday, the government has been shut down for 35 days, tying the record with the longest shutdown since the 35-day shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019. As of now, five more Democrats need to vote “yes” on a stopgap bill, or continuing resolution (CR), that will recirculate money through the government agencies and reopen the government through Nov. 21.
“Obviously we’re going to have to change the CR,” Mullin said when asked if he wanted to see the stopgap spending bill go through January, since Nov. 21 is now less than a few weeks away. “I would love to see us attach some appropriations bills on it, especially defense.”
As a result of the shutdown, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) furloughed around 1,400 employees, 80% of its workforce, with only 375 exempted as critical personnel to watch over the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. House Democrats bemoaned the furloughs, questioning their legal basis and alleging they were “politically motivated,” since NNSA employees had not been furloughed in past shutdowns including those under President Donald Trump, in a letter to the DOE and NNSA.
“You can’t make sense out of crazy, and that’s where Chuck Schumer [(D-N.Y.), Senate minority leader] has been this whole time,” Mullin said. “But I will tell you there’s enough Democrats that I’m friends with that were willing to vote last week.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group in the House, consisting of Reps. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) released a “statement of principles” as a compromise to temporarily extend and reform the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and its subsidies. This is one of the issues Democrats insist be on the table for ending the government shutdown, and could be a sign the “gridlocked” Congress, as the statement called it, is loosening up to reopen the government.