{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F1A13731-52A9-4C01-A328-0F46613C0E8C", "Thune Joins Squawk Box, ABC News", "2025-10-09", "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", "Clickhere to watch Squawk Box andhere to watch ABC News.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) joined Joe Kernen on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box and Linsey Davis on ABC News.\n\nOn Congress\u2019 responsibility to fund the government:\n\n\u201cThe only thing standing between the government being opened up again and us having a conversation about this is five Democrats coming forward and doing the right thing for the country.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cThis is a political game for [Democrats] \u2026 I understand they\u2019ve got these outside groups and this left-wing constituency that is clamoring to fight with President Trump. But this isn\u2019t about the game \u2026 These are the real life consequences that happen to the American people if their government doesn\u2019t act in a responsible way.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 shutdown hypocrisy:\n\n\u201c[Democrat] leadership has no interest in a solution. When Chuck Schumer is saying \u2018this is getting better for us every day,\u2019 that\u2019s not somebody who wants to see this get resolved. And they are pandering to the left-wing special interest groups out there who have demanded this and demanded this showdown with the president of the United States.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got a bill \u2026 that\u2019s passed the House, that\u2019s sitting at the desk in the Senate, that we could pass today, put it on the president\u2019s desk, he would sign it into law, and this shutdown, whole fiasco, ends, and people can get back to work, and we can start paying the federal employees who are starting to miss paychecks.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cThe last year the Senate Democrats had the majority, we didn\u2019t do a single appropriations bill. We\u2019ve done three [this year]. We want to do more. The funding resolution is about \u2026 giving us the opportunity to finish the annual appropriations process in the way we should be doing it \u2013 transparent, open, through regular order \u2026\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got a very straightforward proposal out there: Keep the government open, and then let's sit down and talk about these other issues.\u201d\n\nOn the consequences of Democrats\u2019 shutdown:\n\n\u201cRight now, it\u2019s all about politics. And as Chuck Schumer pointed out in his interview yesterday, this is a big game for the Democrats. He actually said yesterday, \u2018Every day, this is getting better for us.\u2019 I mean, do you think it\u2019s getting better for the troops that aren\u2019t going to get paid, the air traffic controllers that aren\u2019t going to get paid, for the Border Patrol agents that aren\u2019t going to get paid?\n\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t a game. This is real. This is people\u2019s lives we\u2019re talking about. This is the families of the American people. And it\u2019s important to get the government open again. We give the Democrats an opportunity, pretty much on a daily basis, to actually vote to do that.\n\n\u201cWe have 55 senators \u2013 a majority, 55 out of 100 senators \u2013 who are voting to open the government. We need five more Democrats, because, as you just pointed out, it takes 60 to do anything in the Senate.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 health care crisis:\n\n\u201cObamacare, at its core, is inflationary. It\u2019s been driving up costs \u2026 The fundamental problem here is the underlying program \u2026 needs to be reformed, and the president wants to do that. The president would like to overhaul Obamacare and give people health insurance that is higher quality and more affordable, but you\u2019ve got Obamacare now embedded for the last 15 years.\n\n\u201cThe Democrats \u2026 enhanced these subsidies a few years ago, so there\u2019s no income cap on it \u2026 I think the president is more than open to sitting down and working on solutions that would improve quality and affordability for people in this country when it comes to health care. But part of the problem you have is the Obamacare program in the first place, and everything that goes with it, has an inflationary impact on health care costs.\n\n\u201cHealth care costs have been going up. They\u2019re going to go up irrespective of what happens on these enhanced subsidies, they were going up anyway \u2026 I think that\u2019s a problem that needs to be addressed [and] needs to be looked at \u2026 We\u2019re willing to do that, but you can\u2019t do it while you\u2019re holding the federal government hostage.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cThe question you have to ask yourself is, should the American taxpayer be subsidizing people who are making $500,000 a year, when it comes to their insurance? \u2026 The very fact that it costs $400 billion to extend it \u2026 suggests that this thing ought to be ripe for reform \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWhen you have people making half a million dollars a year that are getting subsidies from the taxpayers for these federal subsidies for these insurance plans, something might be a little bit amiss there. There are no income caps on it. There are a lot of what you\u2019d call premium-free policies \u2013 in other words, nobody \u2026 pays anything for it.\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t even know they have coverage. Insurance companies are incentivized to enroll people. They do that automatically, sometimes without the insurer\u2019s knowledge \u2026 The subsidies are going directly from the government to the insurance companies. And as a result of that, last year \u2026 a little more than half of the people who were covered never filed a claim, because a lot of them don\u2019t even know they have coverage.\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=F1A13731-52A9-4C01-A328-0F46613C0E8C"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7127688731998205, "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"}