Cloture Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have a motion to reconsider.
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the Democrat party is the party that will not take yes for an answer. We offer Democrats a clean, nonpartisan CR, no Republican policies for them to swallow, nothing for them to object to; they said no. We offer to accommodate their healthcare demands by guaranteeing them a vote on their proposal if they vote to reopen the government; the answer is no.
OK. Fine. So we thought if they don't want to fund the government via continuing resolution, we will give them the chance to fund the government a different way, by attempting to move forward with regular- order appropriations bills. And, once again, the answer was no.
Democrats just voted to block the fiscal year 2026 Defense appropriations bill, a bill, I would add, that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee by a robust bipartisan margin--26 to 3 I think it was.
That is right. After voting last week for an authorization bill to increase troop pay, Democrats just voted against the bill that would actually pay the troops.
We have to ask the question, Why?
Because to quote a recent news story--this is a direct quote-- ``voting to proceed with the defense bill relinquishes some of the party's leverage.'' Relinquishes some of the party's leverage? I mean, who really cares, right, if the troops are paid as long as the Democrats are able to get what they want.
Now, I offered up--and I had conversations with Democrats here on the floor--that if we could get on the Defense appropriations bill, the interest they have in adding other bills I would certainly accommodate. And I suggested that that was the business model that we adopted when we passed the first three-bill package. We got on the MILCON-VA appropriations bill, and then we worked collectively, both sides, to try and clear, adding the Ag appropriations bill, the leg branch appropriations bill, and we tried to add the CJS appropriations bill-- which was objected to by one Member on the Democrat side--but that is how we fashioned getting these appropriations bills on the floor and getting them voted on.
Now, if anything should be clear by now--if anything should be clear by now--it is that I am interested in doing a normal appropriations process, unlike what happened when they had the majority, which was the Appropriations Committee will report bills out--11 of the 12 last year. Not a single one was brought to the floor of the Senate.
We have done three bills. We are trying to go to conference on them. They are blocking that.
So now we bring up the Defense appropriations bill, something that should get 80 votes on the floor of the Senate, that I said came out of the committee 26 to 3, and they are blocking it.
Now, there is a path forward here to do appropriations: Get on the bill. Then we will try to add other appropriations bills as we work both sides to clear up objections, concerns that people have.
The fact of the matter is, they didn't have to block us even moving to the bill because there are multiple opportunities--60-vote threshold opportunities--for them to block it later on if they don't like what happens.
This is politics. If anything was needed to demonstrate just how fundamentally uninterested Democrats are in supporting our troops and defending our country, just take a look at this vote. Mere months ago--I say mere months ago--Democrats were complaining about all the damage shutdowns do to hard-working Americans. I literally could fill the rest of this hour with Democrat quotes from the past few years about the devastating impacts of shutdowns.
Now, Democrats couldn't care less. They are happy to sacrifice any American--evidently, any principle--to their political goals. Democrats like to position themselves as the party of the little guy and the defender of hard-working Americans. But, as this vote makes clear, whom do Democrats really care about? Democrats.
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