Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Monday said the government shutdown has dragged on for so long that it’s time to start thinking about bringing the GOP-controlled House back to Washington to pass a new stopgap funding bill.
The House last voted on Sept. 19, when it passed H.R. 5371, a “clean” continuing resolution funding the government until Nov. 21, and sent the bill to the Senate.
Since then, Thune has brought the measure to the Senate floor 10 times and Senate Democrats have blocked it 10 times.
Thune on Monday acknowledged the House may need to come back soon to pass a new government funding stopgap since the Nov. 21 end date of the pending continuing resolution is now a month away.
Asked by a reporte whether it’s time “to start thinking about the House coming back and extending” the funding period covered by the continuing resolution, Thune replied affirmatively.
“Yup, for sure,” he said. “Every day that passes, we’ve got less time to fund the government.”
Thune reiterated that his goal is to fund the federal government through the regular appropriations process, which means bringing the 12 annual discretionary spending bills to the floor individually or in small packages so that lawmakers have enough time to vet and debate the legislation.
He wants to avoid piling all of the annual spending bills into an enormous omnibus package, which forces lawmakers to vote on spending decisions without fully knowing the detailed substance of the legislation.
“If you’re somebody who actually does care about the normal appropriations process, and I think there are a lot of Democrats who do, every week that drags by it gets harder and harder to actually have an appropriations process,” he warned.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said repeatedly that he does not plan to reconvene the House until Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government by passing the 24-page funding measure the House approved in September.
Monday marked the 20th day of the shutdown, the third-longest government shutdown in history.
