GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and has been involved in bipartisan discussions on how to end the shutdown, said Wednesday evening she is more “encouraged” by the direction of talks, adding that the “pieces” of a deal exist, and a solution could “come together quickly” once the dam breaks.
“I think that there are, have been enough of the pieces that have been talked through that if, if somebody can just diagram out how it all comes together and present that — yes, I do believe it’s possible to kind of come together quickly,” she told reporters.
“There’s no great magic in how we get out of this. It’s the same stuff we’ve been talking about for months,” added Murkowski.
“It’s, let’s do all appropriations bills, let’s figure out what the temporary fix is, what we’re going to do with the premium tax credits, you know, maybe, maybe figure out how we can include some health care reforms. And the government is open, and we’ve got a path forward for for finishing up our appropriations bills, so that we don’t put ourselves in this mess again.”
Murkowski was clear that any solution would be based around “a path forward on appropriations, good discussions on how we deal with the ACA cliff that we’re facing at the end of the year,” and other potential health care reforms.
Asked if including health care subsidies in a deal is realistic, she acknowledged any agreement may have to be multi-part in order to overcome the lack of trust between the two sides.
“There may be — there may be steps. You do this step, demonstrate some good faith. We do this step, it demonstrates a good faith, and then it unlocks something else,” said Murkowski.