North Dakota Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak said Thursday, Oct. 2, she is hoping for an end to the government shutdown with a vote scheduled for Friday or Saturday.

“I hope that some of the Democrats start to think about this more clearly and think about what they have said in the past,” Fedorchak said, noting that many Democratic leaders over the years have gone on record saying government shutdowns hurt Americans and it’s not the right way to do business.

“I agree with them. We should stop this. We’ve got a very clean, simple, nonpartisan, noncontroversial solution that we delivered to them several weeks ago. And so, I hope that they just go along with that,” she said, adding, “It’s not something that I see Republicans giving in on anytime soon.”

Senate Democrats defeated the Republicans’ proposed continuing resolution to fund the government past Oct. 1 while a new fiscal year budget continues to be drafted.

“Republicans passed this clean continuing resolution with nothing attached to it – just a clean extension of government funding as it stands today,” Fedorchak said at a news conference. “We’re not willing to compromise on common sense, and what the Democrats are proposing and what they are asking for is not common sense. It does not reflect what North Dakotans want, and quite honestly, would be pretty bad for North Dakota.”

Fedorchak said the Democrats’ plan increases spending while taking away the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund, removing work requirements in Medicaid and restoring nursing home staffing mandates that North Dakota facilities have opposed.

North Dakota Democrats have argued if Congress doesn’t extend the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, millions of Americans will face a health care crisis, including 35,000 North Dakotans. Medicaid cuts would kick 18,000 North Dakotans off their health care coverage, they state.

Fedorchak said the ACA premium tax credits do not expire until the end of the year.

“We are absolutely working on solutions for that program,” she said, “and have made it very clear to the Democrats that that’s something that we want to work together on, in a bipartisan way, to figure out what to do with that.”

Fedorchak said she knows a number of North Dakotans, including farmers, who rely on the tax credits, and she does not support an abrupt end.

“I don’t support them expiring and going away entirely,” she said. “But I do think we need to reform them so that they help correct the big challenges in the system, which are – we want costs to go down. We want health care costs to go down. We want health care outcomes to get better. We want people to be healthier. And so, government programs should be aimed at achieving those two goals. Currently, this one does not really accomplish that first goal, for sure, in terms of making health care less expensive.”

She called for restraining the program to begin focusing it on individuals who truly need it, and then make health care more affordable in other ways for everyone else. She said Democrats could have made the program permanent and didn’t, suggesting even they viewed it as a temporary program to encourage more people to get health insurance.

“It’s expanded significantly. And I think we need to rethink how it performs and redirect and reform it. And that’s what we will work on after we get past this government shutdown,” she said.

Fedorchak added her office has received little in the way of constituent concerns related to the shutdown. Congressional offices remain staffed, with only interns furloughed, she said.