The Senate voted on the short-term government funding bill for a 10th time on Thursday, and for a 10th time, it didn’t pass.
So Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for the first time since the government shutdown began, changed course and tried to bring an appropriations bill to the floor. That didn’t work either.
Democrats blocked a regular defense appropriations bill from coming to consideration that would eventually pay the military and fund some Department of Defense programs. The party, which has largely been in lockstep in its strategy to vote down the House-passed continuing resolution until they win some concessions on health care, was mostly aligned on blocking Thune’s next step, too.
Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee, said on the Senate floor that he would be voting “no” “with some regret.”
“We have had a positive and productive process in Senate Appropriations this year, but the leader’s motion to go to the House defense bill was not expected, was not discussed, was not clear to my caucus as to what happens next,” Coons said.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock voted “no” and said Thune’s strategy to bring the appropriations bill to the floor during the shutdown was him “playing games.”
“What we’ve seen with the Republicans is an effort to do everything in a partisan basis,” Warnock said. “They have the Senate, they got the House, they got the White House. Apparently, they don’t think they have to work with Democrats, so this is the result that they keep getting.”
Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted “no” because he said he wanted the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, informally called “Labor-H,” which is also ready for floor consideration, to be attached to the bill.
“I think it’s important to do these bills as a package,” King told NOTUS. “I’m on the Armed Services Committee. I’m solidly in favor of funding armed services. I just think there’s some procedural steps before we’re ready.”
The motion senators voted on Thursday was for the House version of the defense appropriations bill. What ultimately becomes law is often a version with the Senate’s additions and changes attached to it from a conference between both chambers. Thune said Thursday working out those differences in conference was something House Speaker Mike Johnson had committed to.
If Thursday’s vote succeeded, that process could have kicked off. But the outcome left Republicans in a familiar state of frustration as they went home for the weekend.
“I think it’s turned into a food fight, which is preposterous beyond belief,” Sen. Jim Justice told NOTUS after the vote.
“Here we are, elected officials in this wonderful building, and supposed to be here serving the people, and you got a food fight going on,” Justice added. “You’ve got a lot of people that are out there that are really hurting.”
Thune threw loud criticism at Democrats in a floor speech after the vote.
“Now there’s a path forward here to do appropriations: get on the bill,” Thune said. Earlier in the day, Thune told reporters that this vote was just the first step in what he says is both parties’ preferred outcome: a package of full-year appropriations bills.
“If I were them, I’d let us get on it,” Thune said of Democrats. “And then let’s see if we can add. They want to add Labor-H, so do our members.”
Three Democrats, Sens. John Fetterman, Jeanne Shaheen and Catherine Cortez Masto, voted with Republicans to consider the bill. Fetterman and Cortez Masto have also supported the votes on the short-term CR.
“I believe that the government should be open and should not be shut down, and I believe the members of the military should be paid, so that’s what this vote is about,” Fetterman told NOTUS. “It shouldn’t have to come to this.”
Democrats still say they can’t trust Republicans on appropriations, or anything else, in the shadow of the government shutdown, which Democrats still blame on a Republican refusal to negotiate. (Republicans say the opposite.)
Sen. Mike Rounds told reporters before the vote that he’d be “disappointed” if Democrats blocked the defense bill, since without their approval, the appropriations process will stay stalled.
“I think some of them don’t realize that you’ve got to have an appropriations bill as an underline in order to add a Senate bill to it,” Rounds, a Republican appropriator, said. “So I think some of them might be thinking, ‘Well, it’s the House bill.’ Well, it’s an appropriations bill, and all appropriations have to start in the House. So you take that one and you add the Senate material to it.”
Other Republicans said voting against consideration for defense spending is antithetical to the idea of bipartisan talks. Sen. Markwayne Mullin told reporters the votes are just politics.
“It shows that they’re not serious about governing,” Mullin said of Democrats. “I mean, it passed out of the committee of jurisdiction overwhelmingly bipartisan. … Now they voted it down here. You’re not serious about what your job is.”