Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not rule out meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer before the weekend, though he warned that he would want any discussion to have a real chance of moving government shutdown talks forwards.
“We’ll see,” said Thune. “If the meeting is focused around just a, you know, a photo op along the lines of what they tried to get out of the White House, I’m not sure there’s a lot of purpose in that. But if they want to actually come forward and talk about how to, how to end this thing, yeah, we’ll see.”
Thune said that he is being read in on informal bipartisan discussions over an off-ramp out of the shutdown, though he emphasized that the government would have to reopen first.
He added he is in “regular conversations” with the White House, including on “some of the things that are being floated out there by Democrat members to Republican members,“ though he emphasized that until there are at least 8 Democrats ready to vote to reopen the government, “I’m not sure this, this goes anywhere.”
The GOP leader said it is “unlikely” the Senate will stay in town over the weekend. “They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to keep — to open up the government. And if that fails, then they can have the weekend to think about it, we’ll come back, we’ll vote again on Monday,” he said.
He also noted he hasn’t specifically talked to Trump about federal workers being laid off, but insisted the goal is to ensure the shutdown “does the least amount of harm.”
