Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said on Tuesday that at least two additional Senate Democrats are in discussions to break ranks with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and vote in favor of funding the government.
The partial government shutdown has now entered its second week. So far, only three Senate Democrats — John Fetterman (PA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and Angus King (ME), an independent who caucuses with Democrats — have joined Republicans in supporting efforts to release federal funds. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) remains the lone Republican holdout.
But Thune indicated to Fox News that more Democrats are set to join Republicans in support of a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government.
The House has already approved a temporary funding measure to keep the government open through late November, but Schumer has thus far prevented most of his caucus from backing the bill. The measure requires 60 votes to advance in the Senate, meaning at least eight Democrats would need to cross party lines if Paul continues to oppose it — a move Thune suggested is increasingly likely.
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“Well, we’re only stuck as long as a handful of Democrats decide they want to follow the leader and play politics rather than do the right thing on behalf of the American people and open up the government. That’s where we are,” Thune told Fox News host Harris Faulkner.
He revealed that Republicans now have 55 votes to fund the government when the motion goes to the floor for the ninth time, indicating that two additional Democrats support it.
“We have 55 of 100 United States senators voting to reopen the government. We need five more Democrats. It takes 60 to do most things in the United States Senate, and all we need is five Democrats. But their leadership is intent on on pacifying and trying to appease this far-left base,” Thune said.
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“They’ve got this big rally coming up next Saturday, which everybody thinks they want to get behind them before they do anything to open up the government. But it’s really straightforward. I mean, this is the legislation right here; it’s 24 pages long, it is clean, it is nonpartisan, it has no policy riders, no partisan gimmicks,” Thune continued.
“This is a straightforward way to open up the government,” he added.
Thune did not identify the two Democratic senators who are reportedly considering breaking with party leadership.
He and other senior Republicans have accused Schumer of deliberately extending the shutdown to coincide with a new wave of “No Kings” protests set for October 18. The demonstrations, largely organized and funded by groups linked to George Soros such as Indivisible, have been promoted by Democratic leaders and sympathetic media outlets as evidence of grassroots support.
The Senate is expected to hold its ninth vote later Thursday on the continuing resolution (CR) aimed at reopening the government and extending funding through late November.
Schumer (D–NY) is facing bipartisan backlash after he declared this week that the ongoing federal government shutdown is “getting better for us every day” – meaning Democrats – prompting sharp condemnation from the White House and Republican lawmakers.
The shutdown began after negotiations collapsed over Democrats’ push to restore health care funding for illegal aliens, a measure Republicans have rejected as “reckless and unfair to taxpayers.”
“Every day gets better for us,” Schumer said, according to Punchbowl News. “It’s because we’ve thought about this long in advance, and we knew that health care would be the focal point on Sept. 30, and we prepared for it… Their whole theory was — threaten us, bamboozle us, and we would submit in a day or two.”
“Chuck Schumer just said the quiet part out loud: Democrats are gleefully inflicting pain on the American people over their push to give illegal aliens free health care,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in response.
