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Hello and welcome to the Punchbone News Readback Podcast. I'm your host, congressional reporter Max Cohen.

I'm joined today by a special guest, policy expert portal author Sammy Handler to talk all things government shutdown

Sammy thanks for being with me thanks for having me max happy to be here and be talking about the

shutdown aren't we all um no we're not no sarcasm I mean listen we're we're over a month in now

and this week was a crucial week for negotiations to get out of it.

We started the week feeling pessimistic, feeling bleak.

Not a lot was happening.

But there was movement on appropriations that I want to talk to you about to start off with.

What happened with the spending bills this week,

and why does that potentially

mean the shutdown maybe coming to an end soon?

Right. So I think the biggest thing, which is what you scooped this week, Max, a very good scoop,

that Democrats hotline a package of appropriations bills. Now, to be clear, this does not open the

government. This does not even open parts of the government, right? Because we would need the house back. We would need bills to be pat- like, you know, a lot of things happen for that, for the government to be open in that way. But it, this is the most movement we've seen, you know, on appropriation, at least since the shutdown began.

It's a great sign that, you know, Dems are checking for objections on these bills.

It means, like, you know, Democrats are saying that they can go to Republicans and say,

listen, our side is not the problem here.

...