Just hours before the government shutdown became the longest in U.S. history, Senate Democrats privately agonized behind closed doors Tuesday about bringing it to an end.
A two-hour-plus lunch meeting ended without a clear consensus on an endgame for the 35-day standoff, even after several senators involved in increasingly serious bipartisan negotiations laid out their thinking during the lunch, according to multiple attendees.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) emerged from the long meeting and signaled that his party isn’t yet ready to surrender — guaranteeing the shutdown would surpass the roughly 34-day, 20-hour shutdown that ended in January 2019.
“Families are opening their health care bills and wondering how they’ll pay them. That’s the reality. So we’re going to keep fighting day after day, vote after vote, until Republicans put working families ahead of the wealthy few,” Schumer told reporters.
