Rushmore State News

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) appeared on PBS NewsHour with Amna Nawaz to discuss the ongoing government shutdown and Congress's responsibility to restore funding.

Thune emphasized that the Senate already has a majority in favor of reopening the government. "All we need is … five Democrats to vote with us … it’s passed in the House, president will sign it … We’ve got 55 senators currently – a majority of the United States Senate – who have voted multiple times now to open up the government," Thune said.

He described the funding resolution as straightforward and nonpartisan, lacking any policy riders or specific Republican priorities. "You can’t take the ... federal government hostage. This is something that is routine, at least it has been in the past, when you do a short-term funding extension, and the one that we put together is … nonpartisan, has no policy riders, no Republican priorities in there. It is a straightforward funding resolution to keep the government open until such time as we can complete and finish the appropriations process … something that when the Democrats had the majority the last four years and while Biden was president, they did 13 different times …

“This is a hijacking of a process that should be very straightforward, and you shouldn’t take a hostage, like federal workers …”

Thune criticized what he described as hypocrisy from Democratic leaders regarding government shutdowns. “What matters here is the people who get hurt by a government shutdown … the federal government should not be taken as a hostage. And that used to be a very heartfelt position of a lot of Democrats in the Senate, including the Democrat leader.

“But now, all of a sudden, things flipped and what’s changed is [Democrats] got a new president in the White House, and it’s a president they don’t like. And the left-wing base in the country is very adamant about fighting this president … so the Democrat leaders in the House and the Senate have followed that lead.

“But there are, I think, reasonable Democrats out there who recognize this is a bad strategy and it harms the American people and hostage-taking shouldn’t be something that’s permissible.

“Government shutdowns hurt everybody, and it doesn’t matter who gets blamed. [This] shouldn’t be about politics. It ought to be about … what’s in the best interest of the American people, and that’s getting the government open again.”

He outlined some of the immediate impacts caused by the shutdown. “Right now, we’ve got a government that’s shut down. We got military people who aren’t going to get paid starting early next week, air traffic controllers who aren’t getting paid, Border Patrol agents who aren’t getting paid.”

Thune concluded by urging action from Senate Democrats: “All that has to happen is we pick up the bill off the Senate desk, five Democrats join us in addition to those who already have, and the government opens up again, and then you don’t have that discussion, everybody gets paid again. That’s the best way to end this.”