WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today spoke at a press conference with Senate Republican leadership:
Thune’s remarks below (as delivered):
“Although it was totally unnecessary, the shutdown is over.
“And thankfully, after 43 days, we had enough Democrats who concluded that continuing to punish the American people wasn’t the right way to deal with the challenges that face our country.
“And so we’re all very pleased that we are out of the shutdown.
“And of course, the question now is, what comes next?
“And I think, at least here in the Senate, we have a lot of things, as you know, we have to get done.
“The defense authorization bill, which has passed the Senate, is now being conferenced with the House, and when that conference is complete, we want to get that across the floor of the Senate.
“We have another nominations package we need to clear before the end of the year.
“And of course, we want to get the appropriations process moving again.
“It got slowed down during the shutdown, unfortunately, and as a consequence of that, we’ve got a lot of ground to make up.
“But as you all know, we did pass the three appropriations bills … MilCon-VA, Ag, and Leg Branch.
“So three of the 12 are now law, and those three we got across the floor of the Senate before August, which is the first time that’s happened since 2018.
“So, as you all know, we are very committed to regular order on appropriations.
“We think that’s the best way to fund the government – rather than having an omnibus bill written in the leader’s office or a year-long CR.
“Going through a normal appropriations process where the committee marks up bills, has input from all the members on the committee, reports them to the floor, and there’s an open process, transparent process on the floor, we think is the best way to fund the government.
“And so, the challenge now is to get the next package ready to go – starting, we’ve got the defense appropriations bill ready.
“We tried to move to that during the shutdown, the Democrats blocked it, we want to get on that.
“We’re also trying to clear four other appropriations bills to put together a minibus that we could act on here in the Senate, so we’re working through those holds.
“But I would just urge everybody who is interested in actually having the government funded through the traditional appropriations process to try and work constructively to get these bills up on the floor.
“To let us get on them and have an amendment process, and try and process them in a way that enables us to fund the government through the appropriations process – as opposed to, as I said, either a continuing resolution or an omnibus or something like that.
“Those are not solutions that are good for the country, and they’re certainly not good for this institution or for the House of Representatives.
“We want to do it the old-fashioned way.
“So, that’s what we intend to be working on over the course of the next several weeks, and I’m hopeful we’ll have more progress to report.”