{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E7818D54-B561-4E2A-9681-1A56A985B5CC", "Thune: Open the Government, Open the Discussions", "2025-10-03", "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 spoke at a press conference with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cWell, thank you, Mr. Speaker.\n\n\u201cThe Speaker is right.\n\n\u201cWe have an opportunity to pick up a House-passed bill that, if it passes the Senate, will be sent to the White House, the president will sign it, and the government will reopen.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s that simple and that straightforward, and that\u2019s all we\u2019re talking about here.\n\n\u201cAll we need is a handful more Democrats.\n\n\u201cWe have a majority of senators \u2013 55 senators have already voted for this clean, short-term, nonpartisan CR.\n\n\u201cAs the speaker said, no policy riders, no gimmicks, nothing in here that benefits Republicans.\n\n\u201cThis is a straight-up seven-week funding resolution, and we need it to keep the government open.\n\n\u201cAnd if we don\u2019t keep the government open, you\u2019ll have all the things that the speaker just alluded to, all the Americans who are adversely impacted by this government shutdown.\n\n\u201cNow, this is something, as you all know, as recently as the last administration, during the Biden administration, when the Democrats had the majority here in the United States Senate, the Democrats, on 13 different occasions, voted for this, a short-term continuing resolution.\n\n\u201cNow, I have to ask, what\u2019s changed?\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s different about this?\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s different is who\u2019s in the White House.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what it is about.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all about President Trump and the Democrats needing to pick a fight to satisfy their far-left political base, far-left activist organizations, who are the tail wagging the dog right now.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all this is about.\n\n\u201cAnd you have a Democrat leader from New York in the in the Senate, a Democrat leader in the House from New York, and you have a mayoral race in New York, you\u2019ve got AOC, you\u2019ve got all these people that are bringing pressure to bear on what should be a routine, simple, straightforward proposition, and that is a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded, which is sitting right now, sitting right now, this is sitting at the Senate desk.\n\n\u201cWe will have a vote in another hour or two, and it will be the fourth time that Democrats will have an opportunity to vote to keep the government open.\n\n\u201cNow, at some point, reason, good sense, common sense has to take effect here, because that\u2019s really what this is.\n\n\u201cThey brought to us \u2013 and the speaker alluded to all the impacts on illegals and free health care programs in this country \u2013 a bill loaded with $1.5 trillion in new spending, which includes all these provisions, and they want to load that onto a seven-week continuing resolution to fund the government.\n\n\u201cNow, what\u2019s happening right now?\n\n\u201cWhen the government is shut down, all the things that we could be doing \u2013 the defense authorization bill, which benefits every congressional district, every state across this country is languishing right now because we are shut down.\n\n\u201cThe other appropriations bills.\n\n\u201cWe have people in the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, and frankly, Democrats, I think especially, because they haven\u2019t had a chance to be heard in the appropriations process for a really long time.\n\n\u201cBecause when Chuck Schumer ran the Senate, we didn\u2019t do appropriations bills.\n\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t put them on the floor.\n\n\u201cThey marked them up in committee, and then they died, and then he wrote it behind closed doors in his office.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the difference.\n\n\u201cWe are opening this process up, and one of the things that\u2019s not getting done while the government is shut down is an appropriations process that allows us to fund the government the old-fashioned way, in the light of day.\n\n\u201cWe aren\u2019t working on permitting reform, which should be a bipartisan priority.\n\n\u201cWe aren\u2019t working on a farm bill.\n\n\u201cWe got a lot of farm policy this summer in the working families tax cuts bill, but there\u2019s more to do there.\n\n\u201cThose should be bipartisan things that we could be working together on, along with appropriations.\n\n\u201cAll those things aren\u2019t getting done right now because Senate Democrats have chosen to shut the government down.\n\n\u201cThey have an opportunity, a fourth opportunity \u2013 fourth time today, fourth time \u2013 to vote to open up the government and to allow us to do the rest of the work that the American people expects us to do.\n\n\u201cThey have taken hostage the federal government, and by extension, the American people, who are the only losers in this.\n\n\u201cEverybody\u2019s talking about who wins and who loses and who gets the blame.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not what this is about.\n\n\u201cThis is about [doing what\u2019s] in the best interest of the American people, and what\u2019s in the best interest of the American people is keeping the government open and operating so it can continue to work on their behalf.\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"], 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