Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., panned Senate Democrats for their resistance to a government funding extension. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Senate Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., however, argue that they want a seat at the negotiating table and are adamant that expiring Obamacare premium subsidies must be dealt with now, rather than at the end of the year.
"They're trying to use what they think is leverage to get a bunch of stuff done," Thune said. "It's never going to happen. I mean, can you imagine anything in that bill that they sent that we voted down today, passing in the Republican House of Representatives? Absolutely not. It's just not serious."
Democrats’ proposal included a permanent extension to the expiring Obamacare subsidies, clawbacks of canceled funding for NPR and PBS, and it would have repealed the healthcare provisions in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" — policy that would reverse the nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts while also getting rid of the $50 billion rural hospital fund.
"They're not being serious," Thune said. "This is just a cold-blooded partisan political attempt to try and score political points with a left-wing base."
Though he has not taken the option off the table, it’s unlikely that Thune would cut this recess short. Instead, he wants to use the impending deadline to back Senate Democrats into a corner. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., played into that strategy, too, when he announced that the House would not return until after the funding deadline.
Thune is ready to bring the same CR passed by House Republicans last week to the floor.
SENATE REPUBLICANS BLOCK DEMOCRATS' 'FILTHY' COUNTEROFFER AS SHUTDOWN DEADLINE LOOMS
President Donald Trump during a bilateral meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 7, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also sent a letter on Saturday to Trump demanding a meeting, where the pair charged that "Republicans would bear the responsibility" of a partial shutdown.
"As a result, it is now your obligation to meet with us directly to reach an agreement to keep the government open and address the Republican healthcare crisis," they wrote.
Trump said on Saturday that he would "love to meet with them, but I don’t think it’s going to have any impact."
A day before, he didn’t appear optimistic that a shutdown could be averted.
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"I think we could very well end up with a closed country for a period of time," Trump said.
Thune may have defections within his own ranks to contend with, too. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted against the GOP’s bill. Only Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., crossed the aisle to support it.
Paul’s vote against the bill wasn’t a surprise. However, Murkowski, who is an appropriator, contended that she wanted a better bill on the floor than the one presented by Republicans and charged that the back-to-back failures of both bills was a "messaging exercise."
"I want to project a message of something that can actually get us through this impasse," she said. "And so my message is a short-term CR that also addresses three past appropriations bills that we've already done. We should include those. We should include a short-term fix of the premium tax credits."
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/thune-slams-democrats-cold-blooded-partisan-tactics-funding-deadline-nears