Senate Democrats block Republican government funding extension bill

Senate Republicans’ bid to pass a short-term government funding extension was foiled by Senate Democrats as the deadline to fund the government fast approaches.

While the proposal easily glided through the House with little drama, it hit a brick wall in the Senate and failed 44-48. Only one lawmaker, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., crossed the aisle to support the Republican plan. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also voted against the bill.

Their failure to send the House GOP’s continuing resolution (CR) to President Donald Trump’s desk came on the heels of Democrats’ failed attempt to advance their own counter-proposal to the Republicans’ plan.

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It also comes as lawmakers gear up to leave Washington, D.C., for a week to observe the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. They’re expected to return with just two working days left before the deadline to fund the government on Sept. 30.

“The House has acted,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. “The president’s ready to sign the bill. We’ve got the appropriations committee and a lot of senators who are ready to go to work to pass bipartisan appropriations bills to fund the government by allowing these additional weeks into November. In order to do that, Democrats have to take ‘yes’ for an answer.”

The CR would have kept the government open until Nov. 21, and it included tens of millions for increased security for lawmakers and the judicial and executive branches.

Senate Democrats have dug in against the GOP’s proposal, not so much because of what’s in the bill, but what’s not in it. They have also hung the possibility of a government shutdown on Trump, who demanded that Republicans cut Democrats out of the process.

Thune charged that if Democrats were “serious” about funding the government, they wouldn’t have “put out the most partisan piece of legislation you possibly could.”

“I mean, it’s kind of mind-boggling,” he said.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has also accused Thune of not negotiating with him — a point Thune has pushed back against and noted throughout the week that his office is less than 25 yards from Schumer’s.  

“We have two weeks. They should sit down and talk to us, and we maybe can get a good proposal,” Schumer said. “Let’s see. But when they don’t talk to us, there’s no hope of getting a good proposal. And that makes no sense.”

“And again, when Donald Trump says don’t negotiate with Democrats, because he doesn’t know what the Senate is like, or he doesn’t know how to count, because without Democrats, they’re going to end up shutting down the government,” he continued.

However, the demands Schumer and Democrats laid out in their counter are a bridge too far for Republicans.

Included in the bill were a permanent extension to COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year, efforts to repeal the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” and a clawback of canceled NPR and PBS funding.

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Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital that the legislation was a “Trojan horse by the Democrats.”

“It’s to me, it’s a preview of what they’re going to want to do,” he said.

“Schumer has to play to the far-left fringe that is actually running the Democrat Party right now,” Barrasso continued.

Senate Democrats are adamant that the Obamacare credits, in particular, need to be dealt with now rather than near the deadline. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told Fox News Digital that lawmakers “have to do it now.”

“All the [insurance rate] notices go out Oct. 1, so you have to have it now,” Peters said.

However, Republicans argue that including an extension to the tax credits to a short-term extension isn’t germane to the bill, especially one geared toward trying to give Congress time to fund the government with spending bills. And Thune has said that the credits would be “addressed” after a shutdown was averted.

But for now, the issue at hand still boils down to communication between Thune and Schumer.

“I mean, these are the leaders of the U.S. Senate,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. “I expect them to step up. And if one’s not actually reaching out, the other one should at least demonstrate that they are — they’re trying to negotiate in good faith. If they don’t, then they get what they get.”