{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F6616C7D-D7D0-4829-A0EF-D6BBC1036CA9", "Thune: Schumer Shutdown Day Eight", "2025-10-08", "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 delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, we are now in day eight of a government shutdown, which is truly unfortunate and unnecessary, and totally at the behest of left-wing Democrat special interest groups who have pressured the Democrat leadership into a position that makes absolutely no sense to any thinking person.\n\n\u201cI want you to think about where we are. Think about this scenario.\n\n\u201cYou have a bill passed by the House of Representatives over here in the Senate.\n\n\u201cTwenty-four pages long, clean, short-term, nonpartisan, no policy riders, no Republican priorities.\n\n\u201cA clean resolution to fund the government, which there are 55 senators \u2013 55 out of 100 senators are voting for the clean, short-term funding resolution that would open up the government.\n\n\u201cThe president of the United States has said that, as soon as it is passed in the Senate, he will sign it into law.\n\n\u201cSo what you have is complete unified support for a short-term funding resolution to keep the government open and make sure that all the government employees who are currently being impacted and their families can get back to work and get paid again.\n\n\u201cAnd so it\u2019s always interesting when the Democrat leader comes down here and describes this fantasy world where the bill that they proposed \u2013 which would only get 47 votes here in the United States Senate, not even 50, not 51, not a majority, and certainly not the 60 that are necessary to pass consequential legislation in the Senate.\n\n\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t get a single vote in the House of Representatives.\n\n\u201cSo they\u2019ve got a bill, a proposal that they say keeps the government open, that can\u2019t pass the Senate, wouldn\u2019t pass the House, and wouldn\u2019t be signed into law by the president.\n\n\u201cNow, you tell me \u2013 you tell me \u2013 who is responsible for the government shutdown.\n\n\u201cRepublicans passed a bill in the House, over here in the Senate, 24 pages long, sitting right at the desk.\n\n\u201cWe can pick it up and pass it today, send it to the president, who will sign it into law, the government opens up again.\n\n\u201cOr, you can take this proposal the Democrats have \u2013 which has $1.5 trillion in new spending, allows for free health care coverage for noncitizens, completely obliterates the $50 billion rural hospital fund that we put in place to support rural hospitals in this country who are struggling \u2013 and they think that would pass.\n\n\u201cDoesn\u2019t pass here, doesn\u2019t pass the House, wouldn\u2019t get signed into law [by] the president.\n\n\u201cSo just a logical person \u2013 think about this.\n\n\u201cThink about the juxtaposition of those two positions, and you tell me who is shutting the government down.\n\n\u201cWe have a straightforward, simple proposition: a 24-page funding resolution to keep the government open with no partisan policy riders, no gimmicks, short-term, funds the government through November the 21st to give us an opportunity to continue to do the government funding the way we should do it, through the appropriations process, where we have the committees meeting and Republicans and Democrats contributing, and then bring it to the floor and have an open amendment process here.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the way the government should normally be funded.\n\n\u201cAnd so what this does is provides a short-term extension in order for all that to happen.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all that we\u2019re talking about.\n\n\u201cNow, they have other issues they want to bring up, which I\u2019ve said before, we\u2019re happy to discuss.\n\n\u201cAnd yes, there are some things that I think there is interest on both sides in trying to address when it comes to health care in this country.\n\n\u201cBut you can\u2019t take the federal government hostage and expect to have a reasonable conversation on those issues.\n\n\u201cThe government needs to be funded.\n\n\u201cFederal employees need to go back to work.\n\n\u201cFederal agencies and departments need to be open and providing the services that the American people expect.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s that simple, and that\u2019s really what this is all about.\n\n\u201cAgain, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s whether or not they want to support a 24-page funding resolution that keeps the government open, or continue to vote for $1.5 trillion in new spending, free health care for noncitizens, and completely wiping out a $50 billion rural hospital fund that\u2019s designed to support rural hospitals in this country.\n\n\u201cSomething that would get 47 votes here in the Senate and not a majority in the House of Representatives, wouldn\u2019t get a single vote, honestly, among Republicans in the House of Representatives, and would not be signed into law by the president \u2013 versus something, again, passed by the House, here at the Senate.\n\n\u201cAll we need is five more votes.\n\n\u201cThere are a majority of United States senators today who support the short-term funding resolution \u2013 55 out of 100.\n\n\u201cWe need five Democrats.\n\n\u201cYou tell me who shut the government down.\n\n\u201cAnd Mr. President, I think that the public is \u2026 coming wise to this debate and this argument and these fallacious arguments that are being made by the Democrats.\n\n\u201cIn fact, there\u2019s a new Harvard-Harris poll that came out Monday that found that 70 percent of voters oppose a government shutdown.\n\n\u201c70 percent.\n\n\u201cAnd of interest to my Democrat colleagues, 65 percent of voters \u2013 including 63 percent of independents \u2013 think Democrats should end the shutdown by accepting a continuing resolution like the clean funding resolution I just described that\u2019s in front of us.\n\n\u201cSo what are my Democrat colleagues doing?\n\n\u201cWell, after their resounding defeat in the presidential election last November, you\u2019d think they might be paying attention to the strong majority of voters who would like the shutdown to end, as well.\n\n\u201cNow, you\u2019d think they might notice that 63 percent of independents \u2013 voters I\u2019m sure Democrats would like to capture in the next election \u2013 want Democrats to accept a resolution like the clean CR in front of us.\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019d be wrong.\n\n\u201cBecause, Mr. President, Democrats are still deeply in thrall to the far left.\n\n\u201cAnd they\u2019re taking their marching orders for this shutdown from far-left interest groups.\n\n\u201cAnd I mean that literally.\n\n\u201cA recent Axios article reported, and I quote, \u2018Progressive grassroots groups are blasting congressional Democrats on speed dial to \u201chold the line\u201d in any negotiations to reopen the government.\u2019\n\n\u201cNow, that followed an Axios report that found, and I quote again, \u2018Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his staff are closely coordinating their government shutdown strategy with outside liberal groups \u2026 Backing down and helping fund the government, like Schumer did in March, is unacceptable, the groups have told his team.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Backing down and helping fund the government, like Schumer did in March, is unacceptable, the groups have told his team.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd so the liberal groups say \u2018Jump,\u2019 and Democrat leaders say, \u2018How high?\u2019\n\n\u201cForget the robust majority of independents who want Democrats to end this shutdown.\n\n\u201cYou know, Mr. President, back in the day \u2013 and by back in the day I mean as recently as six months ago \u2013 the Democrat leader was a pretty passionate opponent of government shutdowns.\n\n\u201cYeah, he was an opponent.\n\n\u201cSo much so, that even though he didn\u2019t like the continuing resolution we passed in the spring, he voted for it anyway, because, in his words, and again I quote, \u2018a government shutdown would be far worse.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut then progressive groups got big-time mad.\n\n\u201cAnd now the Democrat leader is leading the charge to keep the government shut down \u2013 indefinitely apparently.\n\n\u201cAnd all those federal workers and hardworking Americans he was so worried about before seem to have just slipped his mind.\n\n\u201cIn fact, Democrats have barely reacted to the fact that federal workers are going to start missing pay.\n\n\u201cMr. President, when we realized that we were going to need a continuing resolution to allow us more time to complete the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills, Republicans wanted to do everything we could to ensure that there was no government shutdown.\n\n\u201cWhich is why we put forward a clean continuing resolution, with no new Republican policies or partisan policy riders.\n\n\u201cWe knew a shutdown would be costly and disruptive for hardworking Americans, and we were determined to ensure that Democrats had no reason \u2013 no reason \u2013 to oppose our CR.\n\n\u201cBut Democrats weren\u2019t deterred by the fact that there was nothing for them to object to in our bill.\n\n\u201cAnd they decided to oppose it anyway.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President, Democrats will get another chance this week to vote to keep the government open.\n\n\u201cAnd I hope the Democrat leader and Democrat senators can summon up some of that concern they used to have about shutdowns, and vote to reopen the government.\n\n\u201cAt the very least, if the Democrat leader is too worried about his polling to vote to reopen himself, he could allow Democrat senators who do care about the functioning of our government to join Republicans to reopen.\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=F6616C7D-D7D0-4829-A0EF-D6BBC1036CA9"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8293901812285185, "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"}