During this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) dismissed Senate Democrats’ proposals to reopen the government amid the shutdown.
The South Dakota Republican called their offering a “nonstarter.”
Host Maria Bartiromo, “Where do the negotiations stand today?”
“Well, there’s not a lot to negotiate, Maria,” Thune replied. “It’s the Democrats that need to open up the government. Right now, we’re at a stalemate. They have now voted four times. We give them the opportunity, a clean, nonpartisan, short-term funding resolution that continues government funding for the next seven weeks, and on four occasions now they voted against it. So they will get another chance on Monday to vote again, and I’m hoping that some of them have a change of heart.”
He continued, “What’s happening here is, the Democrats are trying to hijack a short-term, nonpartisan continuing resolution to fund the government merely for seven weeks to give us an opportunity to get the appropriations process done to try and get $1.5 trillion of new spending, make health care in this country free, health care available to noncitizens in this country, and guts a $50 billion rural hospital health fund that’s designed to support rural hospitals. So, that’s what they have got on the table. That’s their proposal. It’s a nonstarter. It’s not serious. It’s not reasonable. It’s not realistic. Everybody knows that. The Democrats need to come to that realization and understand their option in front of them here is to open up the government, and then we can talk about all these other things they want to have a conversation about.”
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