The Senate concluded an unusual Saturday session at the Capitol without votes, without final text on an interim federal budget bill, and with no indication of making progress toward resolving the government shutdown.

Lawmakers are considering a possible vote on Sunday, when they will meet again to try to find a solution to the 39-day government funding federal impasse.

Senate Republican leaders decided against holding a vote Saturday afternoon as negotiators made progress in an attempt to finalize a deal on a “minibus bill” that would bundle bills to fund military construction, agriculture, and the legislature throughout fiscal year 2026, according to The Hill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that the upper chamber will remain in session until the government reopens.

Thune is pushing a strategy that would involve voting for the interim funding resolution passed by the House of Representatives and amending it to include the appropriations package, known as the “minibus,” as well as a longer extension of government funding.

A vote to begin this process could take place as early as Sunday.

On Friday, Democratic senators offered to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the healthcare tax credits in the Affordable Care Act.

of Affordable Care (ACA), known as Obamacare, a proposal that Republicans immediately rejected. Republican senators spent Saturday criticizing Obamacare in speeches on the Senate floor, echoing President Donald Trump's criticism of it earlier that day, when he said that funds allocated to health coverage should be taken and directed directly to individuals.

Trump proposed redirecting Obamacare funds

Trump proposed on Saturday redirecting Obamacare health insurance money, the main sticking point in negotiations between Democratic and Republican to reopen the federal government, to citizens so they can acquire “much better” health care.

“I recommend to Senate Republicans that the hundreds of billions of dollars currently being sent to the insurance companies, who are sucking up the money, in order to save the bad health care provided by Obamacare, be sent directly to the people so they can acquire their own health care,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The president asserted that in this way the care would be “much better” and they would even have “money left over.”

“In other words, take it away from the big, bad insurance companies, give it to the people and put an end, for every dollar spent, to the worst health care system in the world, Obamacare,” he said before insisting that Put an end to filibustering so that initiatives can be passed without needing more than 60 votes (the Senate has 100 seats).

The subsidies that make Obamacare affordable health coverage will expire at the end of this year, and the proposal by Democratic laws, which has been consistently rejected by Republicans, is the main reason why negotiations to end the government shutdown are not progressing.

With information from EFE