John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 458.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 998 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 21; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; and that at 11 a.m., the Senate execute the order of October 16 in relation to the Mooty nomination; further, that the Senate recess following disposition of the Mooty nomination until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings; finally, if any nominations are confirmed during Tuesday's session of the Senate, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 284 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 168, H.R. 5371.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I understand there is a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceedings.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, this morning, we will offer my Democrat colleagues yet another opportunity to vote to reopen the government--to vote to reopen the government with a clean, nonpartisan CR. That is right. We are not asking Democrats to swallow any new Republican policies. We are not asking them to swallow any partisan policy riders. We are simply asking them to extend current funding levels for a few weeks, while we work on full-year appropriations. And you don't have to take my word for it. Everyone from the President of the Teamsters Union to mainstream media outlets has confirmed that the CR Republicans have put forward is a clean CR. But Senate Democrats chose to shut down the government anyway. Now, Democrats' ostensible reason for their 16-day shutdown is because they want Republicans to agree to bail out the healthcare mess that Democrats created--first with Obamacare and then passing and sunsetting enhanced Obamacare tax credits that were put in place for the COVID emergency, which I think, as we all know, is long behind us. Despite the fact that we are only in this position because of Democrats' poor policy choices, Republicans are ready for that discussion. I am ready. My colleagues are ready. The Speaker and the President are ready--but only once we have reopened the government. We are not conducting negotiations in a hostage situation, and we are not going to pay a $1.5 trillion ransom to get Democrats to reopen government operations. That is right--$1.5 trillion. That is what Democrats are demanding. Between their Obamacare bailout and the other partisan policies that they have included, they want a $1.5 trillion ransom to reopen the government for a handful of weeks. Now, to put that number in perspective, that is equivalent to almost one quarter of the entire 2024 Federal budget--again, just to reopen the Federal Government for a handful of weeks. Now, think about that. Their proposal: $1.5 trillion of new spending, free healthcare benefits for noncitizens to open the government until October 31. That is what their proposal is. So, literally, the American taxpayer is supposed to pay $1.5 trillion so that the Democrats can open the government until Halloween, 2 weeks from now--$1.5 trillion for 2 weeks. That is what we are talking about here. Now, just imagine this for a minute, what might happen if we pay that ransom and agree to the Democrats' $1.5 trillion demand. Well, what is going to happen the next time we need a continuing resolution? How much are Democrats going to demand then? Will we have to add another $1.5 trillion every time we want to fund the government? And they want to do it for 2 weeks--$1.5 trillion for 2 weeks. I mean, where does this end? When taxpayers and our economy have been totally destroyed by Democrats' profligate spending, is that where it ends? No. While I am more than happy to discuss ways to alleviate Democrats' healthcare mess, we are not paying $1.5 trillion or a $1.5 trillion ransom to reopen the Federal Government. As frustrated as I am with their continued refusal to reopen the government, I do have to say that I have some sympathy for Senate Democrats. While they may claim healthcare is the driver of what they are doing, we all know that the primary reason we are in this mess is because Democrats' far-left base demanded a showdown with President Trump. Just 7 months ago, the Democrat leader voted with Republicans to keep the government open because he said, while he didn't like the CR, a government shutdown would be much worse--``far worse.'' But he caught a whole lot of flak for that decision from the far left, and so now, he is leading the shutdown charge. He is not the only Democrat who voted to fund the government in March who is now a member of the shutdown brigade. But no matter how much pressure their far-left base is exerting, we still need some Democrats to do the right thing. It would take just a handful of Democrats to reopen the government-- just a handful of Democrats to enable us to resume paying air traffic controllers, law enforcement officers, and all of the other Federal workers; just a handful of Democrats to get the Federal Government working again for the American people. Later today, Democrats are going to have another opportunity to make the right decision--two opportunities, in fact. They are going to have a chance to vote on the clean, nonpartisan CR which, as I said in the past, sits right there at the desk, which has passed the House of Representatives. We can pick this up, with five more Democrat votes, pass it today and send it to the President. The President signs it into law, and the government reopens. So they are going to have a chance to vote on that yet again, and they are going to have a chance to vote to advance full-year Defense appropriations legislation, so that if we can't reopen the entire government, we can at least make some progress toward securing paychecks for our troops and for defending our country. Just last week, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which is essential legislation, something that we do every year to authorize defense spending and to authorize a pay raise for our troops. So this is the Democrats' chance to make good on that promise by funding the raise. The authorization bill authorized it. The Defense appropriations bill that we will vote on here later today will actually fund that raise so our troops can get paid. Now, again, I realize that Democrats' far-left base is rallying in DC this weekend, which puts extra pressure on Democrats, but I hope that they will do the right thing anyway and vote to reopen the government. All we need is five. The bill is right there. It goes to the President, he signs it into law, and the government reopens. The American people are depending on some--I am hoping--Democrats who are willing to put the interests of the American people ahead of the interests of their far-left base. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have a motion to reconsider.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the Democrat party is the party that will not take yes for an answer. We offer Democrats a clean, nonpartisan CR, no Republican policies for them to swallow, nothing for them to object to; they said no. We offer to accommodate their healthcare demands by guaranteeing them a vote on their proposal if they vote to reopen the government; the answer is no. OK. Fine. So we thought if they don't want to fund the government via continuing resolution, we will give them the chance to fund the government a different way, by attempting to move forward with regular- order appropriations bills. And, once again, the answer was no. Democrats just voted to block the fiscal year 2026 Defense appropriations bill, a bill, I would add, that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee by a robust bipartisan margin--26 to 3 I think it was. That is right. After voting last week for an authorization bill to increase troop pay, Democrats just voted against the bill that would actually pay the troops. We have to ask the question, Why? Because to quote a recent news story--this is a direct quote-- ``voting to proceed with the defense bill relinquishes some of the party's leverage.'' Relinquishes some of the party's leverage? I mean, who really cares, right, if the troops are paid as long as the Democrats are able to get what they want. Now, I offered up--and I had conversations with Democrats here on the floor--that if we could get on the Defense appropriations bill, the interest they have in adding other bills I would certainly accommodate. And I suggested that that was the business model that we adopted when we passed the first three-bill package. We got on the MILCON-VA appropriations bill, and then we worked collectively, both sides, to try and clear, adding the Ag appropriations bill, the leg branch appropriations bill, and we tried to add the CJS appropriations bill-- which was objected to by one Member on the Democrat side--but that is how we fashioned getting these appropriations bills on the floor and getting them voted on. Now, if anything should be clear by now--if anything should be clear by now--it is that I am interested in doing a normal appropriations process, unlike what happened when they had the majority, which was the Appropriations Committee will report bills out--11 of the 12 last year. Not a single one was brought to the floor of the Senate. We have done three bills. We are trying to go to conference on them. They are blocking that. So now we bring up the Defense appropriations bill, something that should get 80 votes on the floor of the Senate, that I said came out of the committee 26 to 3, and they are blocking it. Now, there is a path forward here to do appropriations: Get on the bill. Then we will try to add other appropriations bills as we work both sides to clear up objections, concerns that people have. The fact of the matter is, they didn't have to block us even moving to the bill because there are multiple opportunities--60-vote threshold opportunities--for them to block it later on if they don't like what happens. This is politics. If anything was needed to demonstrate just how fundamentally uninterested Democrats are in supporting our troops and defending our country, just take a look at this vote. Mere months ago--I say mere months ago--Democrats were complaining about all the damage shutdowns do to hard-working Americans. I literally could fill the rest of this hour with Democrat quotes from the past few years about the devastating impacts of shutdowns. Now, Democrats couldn't care less. They are happy to sacrifice any American--evidently, any principle--to their political goals. Democrats like to position themselves as the party of the little guy and the defender of hard-working Americans. But, as this vote makes clear, whom do Democrats really care about? Democrats.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 294.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 372.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.