At 35 days, the government shutdown now holds the record for the longest in history

It is a testament to the current political environment that some senators were not shocked.

“I wouldn’t use the word surprise,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-Los Angeles. “He disappoints me.”

Although Congress has shown no signs of reaching an agreement, some senators indicated Monday that progress has been made behind the scenes.

The traumatic effects of lockdown are now coming into sharper focus. Hundreds of thousands of federal civilian employees are not receiving their salaries, forcing many to turn to local food banks to feed their families. Meanwhile, flight delays are worsening across the country due to staffing shortages of air traffic controllers and TSA agents. The 42 million Americans who rely on federal food stamps through SNAP will receive only about half of their monthly benefits in November.

“The stories this weekend were shameful and disgusting,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a speech Monday. “People are flooding food banks, handing out groceries instead of Halloween candy, and teachers are paying out of pocket to give their students extra food. Horrific scenes have been seen across America of people worried they won’t be able to feed their families and even themselves.”

But bipartisan leaders on both sides of the aisle appear to be moving with no urgency as the shutdown approaches the five-week mark. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune will hold a vote on the same funding bill the House passed to reopen the government for the 14th time. Democrats, who are demanding that Trump negotiate with them on the expiration of health care tax credits before agreeing to open the government, are expected to vote against the bill again.

“I think it’s very clear, and I think tomorrow’s results may confirm it, that the American people want us to fight for them,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on Election Day.

Murphy, who had just returned from Miami, where he had been Talk to voters He continued about rising health care costs: “Lockdowns hurt, but the pain that you just heard in Florida is going to be worse than anything that happens with the shutdown, because when these premiums go up 100 to 200%, these people’s lives are ruined. People are going to die.”

Senators see progress

However, there are still green shoots of hope sprouting in the Capitol. A small group of senators from both parties continues to hold talks about how to break the impasse, including a meeting on Monday after their return to Washington.

“Progress has been made,” Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters said.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee responsible for writing federal funding bills, agreed, without elaborating.

“I feel like we’ve made some progress,” she told reporters. “Over the weekend, staff worked extremely hard. Members worked hard. I personally spoke with members of the House and Senate about the way forward. Democrats are putting out their specific language, for the first time, and it looks better this week. Now, who knows? It could all fall apart again, and I don’t mean to suggest there’s an agreement.”

Senate Minority Rep. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, a veteran of many shutdown battles who is retiring after more than four decades in Congress, said he also feels a sense of optimism that the shutdown could end soon.

“Having been here forever, as I have been, you kind of feel the ebb and flow of this place, and I feel like people are tired of this shutdown and everything that flows from it. But we’re still stuck in this hypothesis of what are we going to do about health care costs.”

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Thune, who along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Los Angeles, has been blaming stubborn Democrats for the prolonged shutdown, said Monday that he believes both sides are “getting close to a cliff here.”

He declined to go into detail, but referred generally to bipartisan negotiations to pass 2026 appropriations bills, as well as his promise to give Democrats a vote on renewing expiring Obamacare subsidies after they vote to open the government.

“This is unlike any other government shutdown in terms of the way Democrats are going about it [are] “They have to be willing to accept yes for an answer,” Thune said.

Relieve pain points

Part of the reason it has lasted so long is that some of the more serious pain points seen during a typical lockdown have been mitigated — either by Trump himself or the courts.

In recent weeks, the president has twice ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to find other ways to pay troops, first by tapping the Pentagon’s Research and Development Fund, and then by using that R&D fund and other funds.

The administration also allocated $450 million in customs revenues to Keep the money flowing To the Nutrition Program for Low-Income Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC.

With the government shutdown, the Trump administration said it would stop funding federal SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, starting Saturday, the first of the month.

But a federal judge ruled that the Agriculture Department must use emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits going, and administration officials said Monday they would send partial SNAP benefits to states for November. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized that as insufficient.

“It is extraordinary that Donald Trump, his administration, and corrupt Republicans on Capitol Hill would voluntarily and intentionally withhold SNAP benefits from 42 million Americans at risk of hunger,” Jeffries told reporters.

GOP splits over new temporary gap

Congress has already used up most of the time allotted in the temporary bill passed by the House of Representatives, which would have funded the government until November 21. Lawmakers will need to extend that timeline, given the lack of progress on legislation to fund the government for the full fiscal year, which runs through September 2026.

Republicans are divided over how long the next short-term funding bill should last.

Collins told NBC News she favors a December 19 deadline, which would put pressure on Congress to reach an agreement before Christmas.

But many other Republicans rejected the idea.

“I don’t think we’ll be done in December,” said Kennedy, who also serves on the Appropriations Committee. “Senator Collins certainly has a right to her opinion, and I understand her point of view. But I don’t think she’ll prevail.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., backed a Jan. 15 deadline to avoid a holiday rush to reach an agreement and instead push the issue to 2026.

“I don’t want another omnibus for Christmas,” Scott said. “This is what keeps happening every year. The only way to make sure we don’t get there is to get through it, get there, and get to January 15.”