But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refuses to bring the votes to the Senate floor. McConnell is refusing to act as a separate but equal branch of the government as outlined in the constitution which was designed to prevent exactly what is happening today. The President holding the government hostage.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/15/...wn-reelection/
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call for a short-term deal to reopen the government while continuing negotiations on border security means that there is now a working majority in the Senate publicly willing to vote to end the shutdown. Fellow Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, and Lisa Murkowski have all urged passage of bipartisan appropriations bills that would bring nearly 800,000 federal employees back to work. Add Graham and all the Senate Democrats, and you have 51 votes.
Back in December, the Senate passed its bill to keep the government open by voice vote, which is recorded as unanimous. That was before President Donald Trump changed his mind and said he would refuse to sign the bills.
The House is now run by Democrats who have already passed legislation to reopen the government. House Republicans are cracking too: The most recent appropriations bill passed for the Department of the Interior earned 10 Republican votes, inching closer to supermajority support. So it’s reasonable to suggest that, under the surface, there may be enough support for the Graham option to override a presidential veto.
This means that one of the main impediments to ending the shutdown is not Trump but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has quietly aligned with Trump since the shutdown began. All McConnell would have to do to open the government would be to put the same bill that the Senate already passed back on the floor.
Yet McConnell has been adamant that he would not put anything up for a vote in the Senate that the president wouldn’t sign, making numerous speeches on the Senate floor on the subject. He has steered clear of negotiations to end the shutdown, now in its fourth week. He rejected a compromise proposal from his own caucus to consider exchanging protections for Dreamers for wall funding.
Back in December, the Senate passed its bill to keep the government open by voice vote, which is recorded as unanimous. That was before President Donald Trump changed his mind and said he would refuse to sign the bills.
The House is now run by Democrats who have already passed legislation to reopen the government. House Republicans are cracking too: The most recent appropriations bill passed for the Department of the Interior earned 10 Republican votes, inching closer to supermajority support. So it’s reasonable to suggest that, under the surface, there may be enough support for the Graham option to override a presidential veto.
This means that one of the main impediments to ending the shutdown is not Trump but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has quietly aligned with Trump since the shutdown began. All McConnell would have to do to open the government would be to put the same bill that the Senate already passed back on the floor.
Yet McConnell has been adamant that he would not put anything up for a vote in the Senate that the president wouldn’t sign, making numerous speeches on the Senate floor on the subject. He has steered clear of negotiations to end the shutdown, now in its fourth week. He rejected a compromise proposal from his own caucus to consider exchanging protections for Dreamers for wall funding.
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