{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=4624CFC1-0C1D-404E-A75F-8B8CD0688B1E", "Thune Joins Guy Benson on Fox News Radio", "2025-11-03", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhere to listen to the interview.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined Guy Benson on Fox News Radio.\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 shutdown hypocrisy:\n\n\u201c[Democrats] are blaming Trump at the same time they\u2019re taking credit, and almost in the same breath \u2026 Republicans want our troops paid. We want the men and women of the Border Patrol to get paid. We want TSA agents, every federal employee to get their paychecks.\n\n\u201cAnd right now, the Democrats are the ones standing in the way of that, but they\u2019re trying to shift the blame and have it both ways.\u201d\n\nOn the consequences of Democrats\u2019 shutdown:\n\n\u201cI really hope \u2026 that this is the week that Democrats decide to end their shutdown, and they are owning it \u2026 I think people realize that [Democrats] have consistently now, 14 times \u2026 voted to block reopening the government.\n\n\u201cI do think that the consequences are really starting to compound across the country. You\u2019ve got now 40 million Americans whose food assistance is uncertain. You\u2019ve got air travel delays that are skyrocketing. It\u2019s having an economic impact on the country, and I think that only gets worse with each passing day.\n\n\u201cWe need five more Democrats to stand up and do the right thing and reopen the government, and we\u2019ll see if this is the week.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats prioritizing their far-left base:\n\n\u201c[Democrats are] trying to pull this thing off where they blame somebody else, and yet they get credit with their political base, and that\u2019s what\u2019s driving this. I mean, they\u2019re so afraid \u2013 Schumer and their leaders are just absolutely running scared.\n\n\u201cThey are scared spitless of what their base will do to them if they vote to open up the government, which is why, in the end, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be their leaders that do this. I think it\u2019s going to be rank-and-file Democrats.\u201d\n\nOn preserving the legislative filibuster:\n\n\u201cThere just simply aren\u2019t the votes to get rid of the Senate\u2019s 60-vote threshold \u2026 It was an important tool for us when we were in the minority. You only have to look back to last year, we blocked a whole host of terrible Democrat policies because of the 60-vote threshold. And if you look at all the damage that Biden and Harris did to our country \u2026 I shudder to think how much worse it would have been without the legislative filibuster.\n\n\u201cAnd here\u2019s the thing: The Democrats, as you point out \u2013 although they\u2019re hypocrites, because they would all vote to block it today, they would all vote when they have the majority in favor of it \u2013 but the truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that\u2019s what essentially we\u2019d be doing, then we would own all the crap they\u2019re going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "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=4624CFC1-0C1D-404E-A75F-8B8CD0688B1E"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8014240302145481, "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"}