WASHINGTON DC -- With Congress now tied for its longest-ever shutdown, a small group of fed-up lawmakers in Washington are furiously trying to end the standoff as soon as this week.

Those members insist there’s real momentum this time. Yet the potential off-ramp doesn’t appear to deliver Democrats any real win on their biggest demand of the shutdown: health care.

Talks over reopening the government are focused on putting together a funding package and giving Democrats a stand-alone vote to extend expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, according to sources familiar with the high-stakes negotiations. The deal would also include a pathway to move ahead with three bills to fund major agencies of the federal government through next September.

But given that there is no guarantee that an extension of ACA subsidies will pass the Senate – much less the House — it’s unclear whether enough Democrats will accept that proposal to reopen the government, the sources said. So it is bound to prompt sharp division among Democrats about whether a vote is enough after the damaging consequences of the shutdown standoff.

Sen. Susan Collins, the Senate’s top GOP spending leader, has been involved in a flurry of conversations in recent days to end the impasse by funding both parties’ priorities in bipartisan year-long funding bills.

“I do believe that we are finally making progress. It’s too soon to declare that this nightmare of a shutdown is over, but I’m very cautiously hopeful that it will be resolved by the end of this week,” the Maine Republican told.

There’s still a long way to go. Party leaders are still not talking. The Senate is about to fail its 14th vote on the GOP’s stopgap plan to reopen the government. And neither side expects tangible progress on Election Day with key races from New Jersey to California on Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is not yet certain the end is in sight. He said Monday he is “optimistic” but not necessarily “confident” bipartisan senators will reach a deal to fund the government by week’s end.

“Based on sort of my gut of how things operate, I think we’re getting close to an off ramp,” Thune said, but he cautioned: “This is unlike any other government shutdown.”

Thune also acknowledged Monday that the Senate will likely have to draft a new stopgap bill — replacing the House’s version that goes through November 21 — in order to buy Congress more time to pass those full-year spending bills. Democrats see this as an opening to support something other than the same GOP funding plan, and to have input on the new version. (One person involved in the discussions said the likely end date for the new bill would be January, though spending leaders like Collins want Congress to aim for around Christmas instead.)

That semblance of movement comes as shutdown damage is quickly racking up. Already on day 35 of the shutdown, food banks nationwide are swamped with new families, furloughed workers are applying for unemployment benefits and air traffic is snarling across the country.

Collins and others involved in the talks have been mostly secretive about exactly who and what is involved. Leadership in both parties had for days largely downplayed the talks, though they are being kept up to speed by those involved, according to one person involved in the talks. For the first time, Collins said Democrats are now contributing to these appropriations talks, but there’s still a huge problem — it doesn’t solve the looming health care cliff next year.

“I don’t know if that’ll work or not. … This has nothing to do with health care, and that’s what my Democratic colleagues have harped on,” GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said bluntly.

Democrats will soon be faced with a key question: What will they accept from Republicans after their month-long push to extend expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies? Thune has publicly offered Democrats an up-or-down vote on those subsidies — but Democrats have said it is not enough.

Asked about her view, Sen. Elizabeth Warren stressed that Republicans need to sit down and negotiate and signaled that her party would not cave just because the shutdown effects were getting more painful.

“He thinks he can use hungry children as a bargaining chip against Democrats, saying, in effect, that it’s only Democrats who care whether or not kids go hungry,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “Well, it is Democrats who care, and it’s Americans who care. Republicans should come to the table and negotiate.”

The internal Democratic debate comes at a delicate time for the party, with internal cracks already beginning to show over the momentum of Zohran Mamdani in New York’s mayoral election this week, which has bolstered progressives while ringing alarm bells for its more establishment wing.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered an even starker warning to Democrats in an op-ed over the weekend, warning the party not to cave to President Donald Trump on the shutdown: “This may be the most consequential moment in American history since the civil war.”

‘Running out the clock’

There’s one notable Republican absent in the discussions: Trump, who returned from a week abroad to find little had changed on Capitol Hill.

White House officials have largely steered clear of major visible involvement in the day-to-day dynamics of the shutdown, consulting frequently with Republican congressional leaders but letting House Speaker Mike Johnson and Thune dictate much of the party’s direction. Trump aides have sought instead to demonstrate that the administration is still pushing ahead on major priorities and policy announcements.

Yet behind the scenes, officials have grown increasingly antsy as the shutdown drags on far longer than any of them expected. Polling shows Americans still placing significant blame on Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, complicating a messaging war that the White House initially anticipated it would decisively win.

The health care rate hikes that Democrats initially shut down the government over more than a month ago are also now starting to hit consumers, further amplifying the issue at a moment in which voters are already unhappy with the cost of living.

Within the White House, officials have had running debates over the administration’s health care platform, consulting with GOP lawmakers and outside policy experts in preparation for post-shutdown talks with Democrats over the restoration of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies.

But those conversations have only progressed so far, stymied by the White House’s own hardline position against any negotiations during that shutdown. That stance, people involved in the discussions said, has made it difficult for the administration to counter Democrats’ attacks on health care, beyond offering vague assurances that officials are developing a health plan — a well-worn promise the GOP has failed to deliver on for nearly a decade.

And it’s created a range of critical unknowns that under the current stalemate will go unanswered until the shutdown is over. Among them: what policies could win bipartisan support, the level of appetite on Capitol Hill for negotiating a broader health reform package, and what the health care landscape will look like whenever the shutdown is finally over.

“We can come up with the policy in 30 seconds,” said one of the people involved in the discussions. “It’s just a question of what politically is going to be acceptable to the Republicans and what Democrats are going to think is enough of a fig leaf to move it forward.”

“People see that there’s an issue that has to be fixed,” added GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York.

“The speaker and Thune have both said this is something they want to address. The willingness is there,” Garbarino told CNN last week. “But the fact that nobody’s talking to each other right now, because they haven’t opened the government, it’s kind of running out the clock.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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