‘Cracks Are Beginning to Show’: Senate GOP Leadership Outlines Post-Shutdown Strategy

(Daily Signal)—On Tuesday night, forty-three Democrats in the Senate denied Republicans the votes necessary to avert a government shutdown.

But tellingly, at least according to one Senate Republican leader, three senators in the Democrat caucus voted with Republicans.

Democrat Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada both voted to pass the continuing resolution which would extend the spending levels of the Biden administration for seven weeks in order to buy time for the bill-by-bill, bipartisan appropriations process. They were joined by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.

“The cracks are beginning to show,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in a press conference after the vote.

“There is bipartisan support for keeping the government open in spite of the fact that [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer is forcing a government shutdown, regardless of the cost, regardless of the consequences to the American people.”

The continuing resolution fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage by a 55 to 45 vote, with 43 Senate Democrats opposing the legislation. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also voted against the bill. Fifty-two Republicans voted to fund the government.

This was the second attempt to pass the continuing resolution. An earlier attempt yielded only one Democrat vote from Fetterman who has previously said that “It is always, always wrong to shut our government down.”

But Schumer, D-N.Y., interpreted the Tuesday continuing resolution vote differently.

“Now two times, Republicans have failed to get enough votes to avoid a shutdown,” he told reporters. “They’ve got to sit down and negotiate with Democrats to come to a bill that both parties can support. They didn’t do that in the past. Their bill, they call it clean, we call it totally partisan. There was no input from Democrats.”

Since the first announcement of the continuing resolution, Democrats have made hefty demands, including undoing recently passed cost-saving Medicaid reforms, hamstringing the White House’s ability to rescind certain federal funding, and extending expiring Obamacare health care premium tax credits, which were enhanced during the previous administration.

Pointing to the fact that the bill was not even written by the current bicameral Republican majority, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., has characterized this as a misleading argument.

“Sen. Schumer says, ‘Oh, well… there’s no Democrat priorities in it.’ Well, there’s no Republican priorities in it,” Hoeven told reporters. “It’s a clean CR [continuing resolution], so, I mean, that’s a false premise right off the jump. And I hope you’re asking him, wait, how does that make any sense?”

Similarly, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., accused Democrats of prioritizing “their own trillion-dollar liberal wishlist over what’s best for the American people,” in a statement to The Daily Signal.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said that the shutdown is the result of nothing less than animus for the president.

“Make no mistake, Democrats shutting down the government has nothing to do with extending COVID-era insurance subsidies,” Tuberville told The Daily Signal in a statement. “Democrats just voted to shut down the government for one reason: Trump Derangement Syndrome. These Radical Leftists are so blinded by their hatred of President Trump that they will do anything to try to stop his agenda.”

For now, the Republican strategy will be to continue to bring the bill to the floor until Democrats finally acquiesce.

“We’re going to continue to vote on the clean CR that was sent to us from the House,” Barrasso previously told reporters before the vote.

He added that “there are not going to be votes between sundown [Wednesday] and sundown Thursday” due to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., continues to make clear he does not believe that he should have to negotiate with Democrats over a seven-week resolution.

“We need to keep the government open. We can talk about whatever else they want to talk about after that,” he said after the vote.

On the issue of Schumer’s demands for the extension of COVID-era enhanced health care premium tax credits,Thune is also not going to cede any ground at this moment.

“This program, if we did what the Democrats want to do, which is to extend it permanently, it’s a $365 billion [cost], so anything that’s going to be done is going to have to be done with significant reforms.”

Both parties were united in one thing—the claim that their party will win the narrative as the shutdown continues.

Americans “are going to keep demanding that we do something about this, and Republicans are feeling the heat,” Schumer said, projecting confidence that Americans would demand some action from Republicans to address a purported health care crisis.

“You have a good number of Senate Republicans and House Republicans, as was mentioned, when they talk to us privately, they say this is untenable,” he added.

But on the Republican side, leadership is hoping that, one by one, Democrats will come into the fold.

“We’re going to have some more votes, and we’ll see where the Democrats come down,” Thune said. “I hope we have enough to change their minds so that we can get this government open and responsive to the American people.”

Jacob Adams contributed to this article.