{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-democrats-are-the-party-of-no/", "Thune: Democrats Are the Party of No", "2026-09-24", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, if there\u2019s one thing that quickly became clear at the start of the 119th Congress, it was that anything we were going to accomplish for hardworking Americans we were going to have to accomplish alone.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s always some partisanship in Congress, Mr. President \u2013 and healthy disagreement \u2013 but it became clear very quickly that Democrats were going to be taking partisanship to a new and rarefied level in the 119th Congress.\n\n\u201cThat started with presidential nominations.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s long been standard practice in the Senate to expedite uncontroversial nominations to allow a president to get his team in place.\n\n\u201cBut from the very beginning of the 119th Congress, Democrats made clear that this history of bipartisan cooperation was over.\n\n\u201cDemocrats chose to slow down every single nomination \u2013 no matter how uncontroversial \u2013 for the majority of the 119th Congress.\n\n\u201cBut slow-walking nominations, Mr. President, was just the beginning.\n\n\u201cAt the top of our priority list for this Congress was preventing the massive tax hike that was set to hit hardworking Americans.\n\n\u201cAnd for a party that claims to be the party of working men and women, you would think that Democrats would have been eager to work with us.\n\n\u201cThey weren\u2019t.\n\n\u201cAnd not only were they not interested in working with us, but every single Democrat \u2013 in both houses of Congress \u2013 voted against tax relief for the American people.\n\n\u201cThey voted against preventing a massive tax hike.\n\n\u201cAnd they voted against all the new tax relief Republicans implemented \u2013 from no tax on overtime, to a new bonus deduction for seniors.\n\n\u201cAnd just in case you thought Democrat opposition was a matter of high-minded principle \u2026 Since Republicans passed the Working Families Tax Cuts, a number of Democrats have tried to associate themselves with some of the tax relief in the bill, despite universally opposing the legislation in Congress.\n\n\u201cAnd the partisanship continues.\n\n\u201cLast week, Mr. President, the Senate attempted to take up legislation on the issue of great importance to working families \u2013 namely, energy prices.\n\n\u201cThe legislation we tried to take up \u2013 the Ratepayer Protection Act \u2013 would have protected hardworking Americans from the increased energy costs associated with data centers.\n\n\u201cThe bill was so obviously commonsense that it passed the House overwhelmingly \u2013 with almost every Democrat as well as Republican supporting it.\n\n\u201cBut in the Senate, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cSenate Democrats objected to passing the bill, and so it failed.\n\n\u201cPresumably Democrats wanted to deny Republicans the legislative success in the leadup to the elections \u2013 even though hardworking Americans are the ones that are going to pay the price.\n\n\u201cThe same thing happened yesterday.\n\n\u201cRepublicans and the White House have been negotiating for the better part of a year with Democrats over permitting reform legislation \u2013 a long-overdue priority that would help lower energy bills for American families by streamlining federal regulations for energy projects.\n\n\u201cAnd we closed a deal with them that we could bring to the floor that incorporated essentially all of the Democrats\u2019 demands.\n\n\u201cBut when it began to look like we could consider the bill this work period, Democrats changed their tune.\n\n\u201cBecause while they may acknowledge the need for permitting reform, what they really care about is denying Republicans another legislative win.\n\n\u201cMr. President, this is an example of, again, just blatant partisanship.\n\n\u201cRepublicans and Democrats have been working for months \u2013 on a bipartisan basis, with two committees of jurisdiction: the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the two committees that have jurisdiction over all of the elements related to permitting reform.\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2019ve had Democrats come up to me on the floor countless times and say, \u2018We really want to get this done. We\u2019re working together. If the White House would work with us on this or that \u2026\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd so, we communicated with the White House; the White House has been engaged in these conversations and discussions for the past several weeks.\n\n\u201cAnd essentially gave the Democrats the things they were asking for.\n\n\u201cDemocrats can\u2019t take yes for an answer!\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like they caught the car, Mr. President, and they don\u2019t know what to do.\n\n\u201cThey said, \u2018we want to work on this,\u2019 because permitting reform affects not just energy projects, but projects in every sector of the economy.\n\n\u201cEnergy projects, of course, obviously \u2013 both conventional energy and renewable energy projects \u2013 are being affected by the delays and the bureaucracy and the red tape and the excessive litigation that comes with trying to do anything in this country of major consequence.\n\n\u201cAnd so both sides had agreed that this was a worthwhile objective \u2013 \u2018Let\u2019s work together, let\u2019s see if we can sit down and hammer out a compromise that incorporates the concerns, the issues that both sides bring to the table.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd that\u2019s been going on for months!\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been watching it. Getting regular readouts. Talking to members on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, on both committees of jurisdiction \u2013 and others who are interested in this issue.\n\n\u201cAnd we get to a point, Mr. President, where Democrats flat can\u2019t take yes for an answer.\n\n\u201cSo, why is that?\n\n\u201cWell, if you agree on the substance, if you come to an agreement on the policy \u2013 which they had \u2026\n\n\u201cI mean, everybody in these negotiations and these discussions had basically said, \u2018Okay, this is the deal, here\u2019s the counteroffer.\u2019 Counteroffer back, counteroffer back.\n\n\u201cThe last counteroffer from the Democrats was agreed to by the White House, by our Senate Republicans \u2013 [Democrats] couldn\u2019t take yes for an answer.\n\n\u201cSo the only conclusion one can draw, Mr. President, is that the Democrats have concluded that it\u2019s good politics for them not to allow the Republicans to \u2018get a victory\u2019 or the president to \u2018get a victory\u2019 in the middle of a political season.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s really the only conclusion you can draw.\n\n\u201cAfter literally months and months and months of bipartisan negotiations in which the very last offer put on the table was one made by Democrats and accepted by the White House and Senate Republicans.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s where we are. That\u2019s what it is. Let\u2019s call it what it is: blatant politics.\n\n\u201cSo Mr. President, my Democrat colleagues may talk a good game about working families, but the truth is that hardworking Americans take a distant back seat to Democrats\u2019 political priorities.\n\n\u201cMr. President, perhaps the most spectacular example of the Party of No came last fall, when Democrats shut down the government for 43 days \u2013 the longest full government shutdown in history \u2013 over a clean, temporary, and nonpartisan spending bill.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\n\n\u201cIt was clear that Congress would need more time to get the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills finished.\n\n\u201cSo Republicans proposed a clean, short-term funding measure free from poison pills or partisan policies \u2013 let\u2019s just fund the government so we can continue the conversation about how we\u2019re going to fund it for the full year.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats?\n\n\u201cWell, they just said no.\n\n\u201cNot gonna do it.\n\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t matter to them that the bill was nonpartisan.\n\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t matter to them that it would only be in effect, actually, for a few weeks.\n\n\u201cAnd it certainly didn\u2019t matter to them that they were putting thousands of Americans out of work.\n\n\u201cThey blocked it \u2013 a clean, nonpartisan spending bill \u2013 and they shut down the government.\n\n\u201cFor six weeks.\n\n\u201cOf course, the fall 2025 government shutdown wasn\u2019t the only time this Congress that Democrats just said no to government funding.\n\n\u201cIn the spring, Senate Democrats initiated the longest partial government shutdown in history due to their unwillingness to fund immigration law enforcement or border security.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cThe Democrats kept the Department of Homeland Security \u2013 the Department of Homeland Security \u2013 shut down for an unprecedented 76 days.\n\n\u201cAnd while they eventually agreed to reopen most of the department, they still refused to fund immigration enforcement or Border Patrol.\n\n\u201cClearly Democrat Socialism \u2013 and its philosophy of zero immigration enforcement and open borders \u2013 has gained a lot more than a foothold in the Democrat Party.\n\n\u201cMr. President, whether the subject is protecting opportunities for women and girls in sports or tax relief for hardworking Americans, Democrats have spent the past 21 months throwing up every roadblock that they can.\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m proud that despite the incredible amount of Democrat opposition, we\u2019ve still managed to accomplish a lot for the American people \u2013 from regulatory relief and border security to the Working Families Tax Cuts.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s more work to be done, and I hope we\u2019ll get the chance to continue our work not only in this Congress, but also in the next.\n\n\u201cGiven the Democrats\u2019 obsession with opposing President Trump and their demonstrated opposition to bipartisan cooperation, I think it\u2019s safe to say that hardworking Americans would undoubtedly take a back seat in a Democrat-led Congress.\n\n\u201cAnd the American people, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cThey deserve better than the Party of No.\u201d", 1, "2026-09-25T10:04:52Z", "2026-09-25T10:05:46Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-democrats-are-the-party-of-no/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9124069474637508, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}