GOP votes down Senate Democrats’ government funding bill
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Senate Republicans on Friday voted down a Democratic proposal to fund the government for one month and permanently extend health care premium subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.

The Democrats’ proposal, unveiled by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), on Wednesday, would have restored nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending cuts and provided nearly $200 million to beef up security protection for members of Congress.

The 47-45 vote failed to meet the 60-vote threshold.

Government funding is due to expire on Sept. 30. Federal departments and agencies will be forced to curtail operations and furlough workers unless Congress passes a continuing resolution in the next 11 days.

The failure of the Democratic funding stopgap to advance sets the stage later Friday for a Senate vote on a House-passed stopgap to fund the government through Nov. 21. The House measure passed the lower chamber 217-212 Friday morning, with only one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), voting for it.

Republicans panned the Democratic proposal for costing an estimated $1.5 trillion, dismissing it as an unrealistic wish list that would never get President Trump’s signature to become law.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) called it a “fundamentally unserious proposal designed to appease Democrats’ liberal base.”

“It has zero chance of making it through Congress, and they know that,” he said on the Senate floor.

Thune said Republicans would instead back the House-passed funding measure, which he characterized as a straightforward and uncontroversial proposal to keep government operating.

“The kind of clean [continuing resolution] Republicans have put forward used to be something Democrats embraced. In fact, Democrats voted in favor of clean CR’s no fewer than 13 times during the Biden administration,” he said.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) framed the proposal as the starting point in a potential negotiation with Republicans on extending health care subsidies and restoring Medicaid funding, which Democrats have pushed to include in the upcoming funding bill.

“We’ll sit down and negotiate if they will sit down and negotiate, we don’t have a red line, but we know we have to help the American people,” he said when Democrats unveiled the plan.

Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) have asked Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) several times to meet with them to negotiate the framework of the funding bill. The GOP leaders, however, have opted to move the bill through regular order instead, refusing a meeting of the so-called “four corners” of Senate and House leadership.

The Congressional Budget Office projects the permanent extension of the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies would cost $349.8 billion over 10 years, though Democrats argue that it should not be scored as adding to the deficit since it would be an extension of current policy. Republicans used that same argument to score the extension of the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as deficit neutral.

Thune says he is open to negotiating an extension of the health insurance premium subsidies but told reporters this week that there’s not enough time to reach a deal on the issue before government funding expires on Sept. 30.

The GOP leader said on Tuesday that he wants lawmakers to comb through the health insurance subsidy program to root out waste, fraud and abuse and apply any savings from cost-saving reforms to the extension of the subsidies.

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