{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2D3E1146-AFA5-4A6D-87E9-C1E36FAC93EC", "Thune Joins The Ben Shapiro Show", "2025-10-23", "2025", "2025-10", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined The Ben Shapiro Show.\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 shutdown hypocrisy:\n\n\u201c[T]his is a real losing hand for [Democrats] to play. It\u2019s certainly costing people all over the country, big time, particularly federal employees. And the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets \u2026\n\n\u201c[Democrats] don\u2019t seem prepared to want to come to their senses and actually do the right thing for the American people, which is to keep the government open.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWe ought to be able to \u2026 open up the government by just having five more Democrats vote with us \u2026 that\u2019s all it\u2019s going to take \u2026 Everything is harder than it should be right now because of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I still think at some point there are going to be some rank-and-file Democrats who break with their leadership and do the right thing for the country, and that is open up the government.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 health care crisis:\n\n\u201c[Democrats] created \u2026 this COVID cliff \u2026 [T]hese enhanced subsidies, which did go into effect \u2026 during the pandemic \u2026 was supposed to be a response to that, [and] the pandemic\u2019s long over. [Democrats] created the expiration date. So this is really a problem of their own making.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201c[E]verything that Obamacare has done, including these enhanced subsidies, has added to the cost of insurance policies. In fact, if you look from 2013 to 2025 to where we are today, insurance rates on \u2026 the Obamacare exchanges, have gone up about 221 percent \u2026 so it\u2019s done nothing but inflate the cost that people are paying for health insurance across this country \u2026\n\n\u201c[T]he fundamental program is flawed. And then the enhanced subsidies were flawed, too \u2026 Insurance companies are incentivized to auto-enroll people, and so it\u2019s become a money maker \u2026 just a factory for insurance companies to make money \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cNow [Democrats are] expecting Republicans to try and solve it for them. And that\u2019s their price for opening up the federal government. And it\u2019s a price that is a very stiff one, because \u2026 to do it the way they want to do it, it\u2019s about $400 billion.\u201d\n\nOn preserving the legislative filibuster:\n\n\u201c[The filibuster has] prevented a lot of bad things from happening \u2026 The Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster for what they called their elections reform bill, which basically was consolidating all of elections in Washington, D.C. It would have \u2026 taken power to regulate elections away from the states, would have done away with voter ID \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cDemocrats have made it \u2026 clear they would love to get rid of the filibuster to enact their agenda, which includes \u2026 statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and expand the Supreme Court up to 15 seats there, abortion on demand, [and] \u2026 federalizing our election system. Those are just a few of the list of horribles that they\u2019ve put out there, and they all campaigned on that \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201c[Preserving the filibuster is] situational for [Democrats]. It\u2019s all about political power. And \u2026 now that they are on the outside, they\u2019re going to use this to their advantage.\u201d\n\nOn confirming President Trump\u2019s nominees:\n\n\u201cWe cleared the backlog [of nominees]\u2026 We\u2019ve been here more days, more hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, at least the last 40 years, as a result of the Democrats\u2019 obstruction. And so we did make a change in the rules that enables us to start processing some of the executive branch nominations in batches, and that\u2019s enabled us to catch up \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be really important for us to continue to fill the judiciary and the executive branch with President Trump\u2019s nominees \u2026 to be able to implement the agenda that he ran on and that the American people voted for.\u201d\n\nOn the Gaza Peace Deal:\n\n\u201c[I]t is remarkable what the president has accomplished here \u2026 [I]t builds on the success \u2026 of the Abraham Accords. Obviously, we\u2019re far from being in a state where we can declare total victory, because Hamas is still active, and \u2026 they need to be completely obliterated, or at least disarmed, so that they are not a factor in governing the Gaza Strip \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201c[The peach deal] wouldn\u2019t have been possible had it not been for President Trump and his leadership \u2026 [W]e still have a lot of work to do, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and our president, working together with our allies in the region, hopefully will continue to stabilize that area and make it a place that\u2019s attractive for people to live and work and invest.\u201d\n\nOn Senate Republicans\u2019 priorities:\n\n\u201c[F]unding the government the old-fashioned way through the appropriations process \u2026 There are things like permitting reform \u2026 [and] AI, which has become a very, very big issue in our lives \u2026 [W]e\u2019ve got to do a farm bill [and] a highway transportation bill. There\u2019s a lot of work for Congress to do that has been put on \u2026 the back burner while the government\u2019s been shut down \u2026\n\n\u201c[T]he most important thing that we do is \u2026 take care and make sure that we protect the country. I always tell people, if you don\u2019t get national security right, the rest is conversation. So we did get the defense authorization bill across the finish line in the Senate.\n\n\u201cWe tried \u2026 to put the defense appropriations bill on the floor, which \u2026 funds all those priorities, and the Democrats blocked it. But taking care of America\u2019s national security interest in what is a very dangerous world is going to continue to be a big priority for us \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get past this government shutdown and the Democrats holding federal employees hostage \u2026 to try and get a bunch of unrelated policy things that they want to get done.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve said I\u2019m perfectly happy to have the conversation [and] talk with them about some of those things, but \u2026 we can\u2019t do that while the government\u2019s being held hostage.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:32:54Z"]], "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/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2D3E1146-AFA5-4A6D-87E9-C1E36FAC93EC"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.7122970204800367, "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"}