The Senate on Saturday advanced a bipartisan continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown, keeping federal funding in place past Election Day and into early December, Senate leaders said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., relented for political reasons. “I think they didn’t want to spend the next, well … three months defending attacks from Republicans about wanting to shut the government down,” Thune said. “I mean, I think there was a narrative starting to build out there based on what’s happened the last 12 months, which I think, they probably — you know, these guys are political animals. I’m assuming those guys are polling all the time.”
Schumer said Democrats had long sought to keep the government open and won concessions in the bipartisan measure on a forthcoming rule change to federal grants. Speaking on the Senate floor, he said, “We want to reach across the aisle and hammer out a budget that delivers for the American people. Today, [this] CR gives us the breathing room necessary to work out a budget that helps make life more affordable to working families and reigns in Trump’s rampant chaos, his rampant corruption.”
Republicans have spent months warning that Democrats would not hesitate to allow a shutdown, and Senate negotiators have discussed measures such as lawmakers foregoing pay during a closure. Republicans also pointed to two previous government shutdowns that lasted 43 and 76 days, respectively, as part of their messaging.
The stopgap now moves to the House, where the fight will continue. If passed, it would give lawmakers more time to work through stalled appropriations talks during the post-midterm, lame-duck period — a prospect some lawmakers doubt. “Us having a budget done on December 11? It takes on whiffs of frozen hell, donkeys flying,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said. “I mean, it’s probably not gonna happen.”
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
