Bipartisan talks about how to end the government shutdown have started “flowering” after Democrats blocked the GOP funding bill for a second time in as many days on Wednesday. The funding impasse centers around Democrats’ demand that Affordable Care Act premium tax credits be extended. 

The Senate voted down the GOP funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, on Wednesday, with 55 lawmakers voting to pass the bill and 45 voting against it. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass the short-term appropriations package. 

Shortly after that vote failed, a number of senators began gathering in the chamber to start discussing how they may get out of the shutdown, according to multiple lawmakers who spoke with the New York Sun. They are still far from an agreement, however. 

“It’s just bipartisanship. It’s just flowering there,” Senator Tim Kaine, who was involved in the huddle, tells the Sun. “We’re basically talking about what you would expect — what is a way to make sure that we find a path forward, and I think some real productive discussions [happened].”

Mr. Kaine says the two big items for Democrats, at this point, are dealing with the Biden-era ACA tax credits, as well as concerns that the White House could simply refuse to spend funds that are allocated via a bipartisan process. Just on Wednesday morning — in an apparent attempt to punish the two Democratic congressional leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries — the Office of Management and Budget froze $18 billion in funds for New York City infrastructure projects. 

“I think everybody should be worried,” Mr. Kaine says of the unilateral withholding of federal dollars. “That’s one of the real reasons that, for me — the most important thing about this budget negotiation is getting the president to agree that a deal is a deal, because he’s just acting like a king.”

The Republican lawmaker who kicked off the bipartisan talks on Wednesday, Senator Mike Rounds, says he is well aware that Republican states will be hurt by the expiration of the ACA subsidies, which will come at the end of the year. His position, however, is that Democrats ought to open the government first before they put pen to paper. 

“We’re not there yet,” Mr. Rounds tells the Sun. “Our leader has said publicly his assurance is that these [subsidies] are going to move forward.”

He says they hope to get Democrats on board with a clean, 45-day extension of government funding — a period during which they can deal with the subsidies “There’s nothing wrong with trying to get more work done in less than 45 days, so we’re still trying to get them to agree to a 45-day continuing resolution.”

Mr. Rounds says he could likely move some of his Republican colleagues to eventually agree to a one-year extension of the tax credits, though they would likely have to be reformed after that in order to make sure wealthy individuals aren’t getting the benefits. 

One Democrat who was involved in the talks, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, says Mr. Rounds and other Republicans are approaching this in a “reasonable” way, though he needs guarantees that the subsidies will be extended as part of this continuing resolution — not one that is 45 or 60 or 90 days from now. 

“I was talking to people who deeply care about trying to address the problem itself. That’s the beginning,” Mr. Welch tells the Sun. “Whether we’ll get to that end remains to be seen, but the folks who are in that conversation acknowledge the peril that folks face.”

“The bottom line is that I sensed real concern among my Republican colleagues about what happens to the people they represent,” he says. “If we go off a cliff on the Affordable Care Act, the same thing that happens to Vermonters — which is devastating — will happen to folks they represent.”

One thing which could blow up the very early-stage negotiations is how the Trump administration is targeting Democratic senators who are refusing to back the continuing resolution currently on the Senate floor. On Wednesday, the White House announced not only that $18 billion for New York City infrastructure would be paused, but $8 billion across 16 states would be unilaterally slashed. 

Those 16 states only have one thing in common: they all have two Democratic senators that voted against the continuing resolution on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. 

The home states of the three Democratic senators who supported the continuing resolution — Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Maine — were spared from having their energy projects cut. 

Both Mr. Kaine and Senator Chris Murphy tell the Sun that one of the greatest hesitations they have with funding the government is simply that they will vote to fund President Trump’s administration, only to see him unilaterally cut the money that was appropriated in a bipartisan fashion. 

“We’ve got to know that a deal is a deal,” Mr. Kaine tells the Sun. “If we vote for a deal and Trump starts to fire everybody next week, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute…’”

Mr. Murphy says what the president is doing is clearly illegal, and that Democrats should not just go along out of fear that they could lose one political battle in the larger context of what he sees as a rapidly eroding democratic system. 

“He’s rooting for a shutdown because he thinks he can act more like a king during a shutdown,” Mr. Murphy says. “The news today is that the president is deciding to act illegally and shut down funding for Democratic states and keep money flowing for Republican states.”

“This is not a functioning democracy if the president seizes spending power in order to reward his friends and punish his enemies,” he added.