{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=FDDF9EBA-0546-465C-9A67-7CC87E892A4F", "Thune: Americans Pay the Price for Democrats\u2019 Government Shutdown", "2025-10-07", "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 Senate Republican leadership:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cEvery day that the Democrats keep the government shut down is creating more, and worse, consequences for the American people.\n\n\u201cThe White House estimates that it\u2019s costing our economy about $15 billion a week to continue to have the government shut down.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s not just our economy.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s American families, the American people who are paying the price.\n\n\u201cThe program funding for the WIC program \u2013 Women, Infants, and Children Program \u2013 was about set to expire.\n\n\u201cI think the White House is trying to figure out a way to move resources around to be able to keep that program up and funded.\n\n\u201cTelehealth, hospital-at-home, programs like that have expired \u2013 meaning that hospitals are losing and patients are losing their flexibility and making it harder to cover the people who need to be covered.\n\n\u201cAnd then, of course, this week, paychecks start being affected for federal workers, and that is going to have real consequences for them and their families as well.\n\n\u201cSo this shutdown continues to create more and more problems, and the Democrats are going to get another chance.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019ve already voted five different times now to keep the government shut down and against opening up the government \u2013 which we have from our colleagues in the House a clean funding resolution, which is nonpartisan.\n\n\u201cSomething that 13 previous occasions during the Democrats\u2019 majority here in the Senate and the Biden presidency, almost all Democrats voted for all 13 times.\n\n\u201cThis is a fairly routine thing that \u2026 happens around here on a regular basis.\n\n\u201cSo instead, what they\u2019ve tried to do is hijack this to get $1.5 trillion in new spending.\n\n\u201cAnd \u2026 there\u2019s no universe in which that\u2019s going anywhere around here.\n\n\u201cThis is a very simple and straightforward proposition.\n\n\u201cThe Democrats want to have a conversation about the covid tax credit cliff that they created, and at some point we\u2019re happy to have that conversation, but not until the government opens up.\n\n\u201cAgain, the consequences for the American people are very real, and this just has to stop \u2013 and it could stop today.\n\n\u201cWe have the bill in front of us.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s in the Senate.\n\n\u201c[The] House has passed it and supported it.\n\n\u201c[The] president is ready to sign it into law.\n\n\u201cCould do it today.\n\n\u201cAll we have to do is pick it up off the desk, as you all know.\n\n\u201cAnd if there are a handful of Democrats, a few more Democrats, who are willing to vote with us, we can get this government opened up again and limit the impact and the effect that it has, the consequences, the adverse consequences on the American people.\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=FDDF9EBA-0546-465C-9A67-7CC87E892A4F"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7636691443622112, "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"}