Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says Congress could avoid a government shutdown next week if Democrats “dial back” their demands to add hundreds of billions of dollars in new health care spending to a short-term government funding bill.

“I’m a big believer that there’s always a way out,” Thune told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday. “And I think there are off-ramps here, but I don’t think that the negotiating position, at least at the moment, that the Democrats are trying to exert here is........

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