Senate Majority Leader John Thune laid bare the truth on national television this week: Democrats are playing political games with the American people’s paycheck and safety, and they are doing it out of desperation. Thune warned that Senate Democrats are standing in the way of a short-term, clean funding bill passed by the House and that their maximalist demands risk shutting the government down.
On air and off, Thune made the commonsense conservative case — a clean continuing resolution would keep the lights on while lawmakers negotiate long-term priorities, and Democrats’ insistence on sweeping healthcare rollbacks and immediate subsidy extensions is a nonstarter. He urged Democrats to “dial back” those demands and accept a temporary, bipartisan fix so federal employees and veterans aren’t punished for partisan theater.
Let’s be blunt: this is hostage-taking dressed up as policy. While Democrats grandstand, the White House has already signaled layoffs and even frozen tens of billions in funding to Democrat-run states — a reminder that hard-working Americans pay the bill when Washington chooses politics over governance. If anyone doubts who is making the tough choices, look at who is demanding trillions in new spending as the price of keeping basic services open.
Republicans have offered the reasonable path forward — a short, clean CR that keeps government running and buys time for real, responsible negotiations on spending and entitlement reform. Thune and his colleagues are right to call out the Democrats’ brinksmanship and to insist that legislation not be held hostage to partisan wish lists; the American people deserve steady government, fiscal sanity, and leaders who put citizens before politics.
