The Senate is leaving Washington, D.C., for the weekend as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Republican work to peel more Democrats to support their plan to reopen the government. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Thune’s move to put the bill on the floor was a multipronged effort. One of the elements was to apply pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus to join Republicans to jump start the government funding process as the shutdown continues to drag on.
Another was to test Democrats’ desire to fund the government on a bipartisan basis — a demand they had made in the weeks leading up to the shutdown.
"I think the leadership is applying pressure," Thune said. "They were all being called into Schumer's office this morning to be browbeaten into voting ‘no’ on the defense appropriations bill, something that most of them, you know, like I said, that should be an 80-plus vote in the Senate."
To his point, the bill easily glided through committee earlier this year on a 26 to 3 vote, and like a trio of spending bills passed in August, typically would have advanced in the upper chamber on a bipartisan basis.
The bill, which Senate Republicans hoped to use as a vehicle to add more spending bills, would have funded the Pentagon and paid military service members.
SENATE DEMOCRATS BLOCK GOP PLAN FOR 10TH TIME, ENSURING SHUTDOWN LASTS INTO NEXT WEEK
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday, April 21, 2023. (Photographer: Tom Brenner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As for the torpedoed defense bill, which was the last vote for the week in the Senate, Thune argued that it was emblematic of Senate Democrats being "in a place where the far-left is the tail wagging the dog."
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"And you would think that federal workers, who you know, federal employee unions, public employee unions, who Democrats [count] as generally part of their constituency, right now, they're way more concerned about what Moveon.org and Indivisible, and some of those groups are saying about them, evidently, than what some of their constituents here are saying," he said.
"Because there’s going to be people who are going to start missing paychecks, and this thing gets real pretty fast," he continued.
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/thune-torches-senate-dems-for-allowing-far-left-lawmakers-hijack-party