Senate fails again to end shutdown
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., joins ‘America Reports’ to discuss the sixth failed vote to re-open the government and the fundamental issues being debated that are keeping it closed.
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When the troops don’t get paid, the “Schumer shutdown” will cross a red line in the eyes of most normal Americans.
The men and women in uniform got their paychecks on October 1 and are scheduled to receive their next check on October 15. Unlike almost everyone else in the federal government currently not getting paid because of the showboating of Chuck Schumer and most of the Senate Democrats, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and the Coast Guard do not have that option of quitting because they have not been paid.
Every other civil servant impacted by the “Schumer shutdown” can simply quit and seek other work. That’s inconvenient and stressful and in some cases probably a crisis for people, but even that unpleasant option is not on the table if you signed up for the military. Our all-volunteer force doesn’t get an escape clause that kicks in when the government doesn’t fund itself for the purpose of political theater. The troops suffer, and they don’t have the freedom to say, “That’s it. I’m out of here.”
MORE LAWMAKERS SAY THEY’RE REJECTING PAYCHECKS AS GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN DRAGS ON
The youngest, least experienced members of the military don’t get a lot of pay to begin with as they make their way up the ranks. An enlisted man or woman with less than 2 years of service at the entry level makes $2,319.00 a month. An “E-2” receives $2,733 in their first two years. The scale increases by grade and years of service, but the youngest, least experienced men and women in the military are usually living paycheck to paycheck, especially if they have a spouse and kids as many of them do.
Senators are not too worried about their friends in Senior Executive Service, or even at the top of the GS scale, say at 14 or 15, not getting paid. The lowest pay for an “SES” member is more than $150,000 a year and their salaries can reach $225,000 annually. A federal employee at the GS-15 level is paid between $123,000 and up to $183,000.
No one wants to miss a paycheck, but the more senior employees of the federal government should be able to weather the disruption without losing their cars or having their utilities turned off.
But, a young sailor deployed far off in, say, the Pacific, with a spouse and baby or two at home? There are tens of thousands of such men and women, and it’s time for Schumer to think about them.
As every single serious person watching this absurd government shutdown knows, Schumer is keeping the government closed for the purpose of holding off another verbal savaging by his likely primary opponent in 2028: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Schumer’s personal political dilemma should not put even more stress on our military than already exists. They signed up to serve, not to be pawns in electoral politics for absolutely no substantive reason whatsoever.
Democrats are down to talking points demanding that Republicans and President Donald Trump “negotiate,” which the GOP and the president are prepared to do over a host of issues, and to do so at the same time as “regular order” proceeds for all twelve of the appropriations bills — meaning that the House and Senate each pass their versions of those bills and then negotiate in a “conference committee” on the final version of each bill.
It is rare that any of the twelve appropriations bills get finished by the end of the fiscal year —September 30. It is increasingly the case that the government operates by “continuing resolutions” or “omnibus spending” bills, neither of which serve anyone very well.
But this year, real progress has been made and most, if not all, of the appropriations bills will be finished by the time a “clean CR” would lapse in a few weeks. Negotiations over the particulars of those appropriations bills are ongoing.
But, the government shutting down doesn’t increase Democrats’ leverage.
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Schumer has got to have figured out that he’s taken his entire party into a political box canyon. It takes 60 votes under the Senate’s rules to pass the clean CR. So, it’s up for five more Democrats to join the 52 Republicans and Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and John Fetterman (Pa.) plus independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) in voting for the House-backed Republican stop-gap funding bill.
(Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) does not vote for any funding bill that doesn’t reduce spending and a “clean CR” doesn’t decrease or increase spending. Paul’s “no vote” is the actual truth test for the GOP’s assertion that the CR cuts not a dollar of spending from existing levels. It doesn’t.)
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When the government reopens negotiations will commence, but won’t be a one-way street. If Democrats want subsidies for the preferred constituencies, expect Republicans to have their list of demands as well.
Trump won the 2024 election — decisively. The GOP won Congress. That the left wing of the Democratic Party feels aggrieved does not mean it is entitled to the power that it lost in a free and fair election.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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