Senate begins procedural vote to end government shutdown Subscibe my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@javhd-4k358 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_dkm_69 Blog: https://girlcollection69.blogspot.com/
00:00Right. So we are gearing up and I can't hear the floor feed right now, but we're gearing up for the actual vote to start playing out.
00:06And this is that procedural vote. Will there need to hit that 60 vote threshold in order to advance the package to then actually be considered?
00:12Then they'll add the amendment on that has been crafted by this bipartisan cohort of lawmakers.
00:18And then they will move to advance that potentially in the next few hours, in the next day or two,
00:22or potentially it might take a few days or a week if some of these lawmakers decide that they want to basically go through all the procedural steps.
00:30That remains to be seen. In terms of the dynamics of what's going on right now,
00:36we are continuing to get some early statements as to what people are doing.
00:40We saw, for example, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia saying that he will vote yes, citing, among other things,
00:46new protections he feels a bit happy with when it comes to federal workers in Virginia.
00:51Same time, the other senator from Virginia, Senator Mark Warner, saying in a statement that he is going to be voting,
00:59he's going to oppose this legislation, raising concerns about health care costs going forward
01:06and arguing that this does not address it.
01:08I have been told by multiple sources that are familiar and close to those that have been on the negotiating front of this deal
01:16that they will have sufficient Democratic support to join with the Republicans, to get over the 60-vote filibuster.
01:22I have not heard otherwise in the last hour or so, but now we are reaching that point where we're actually going to start seeing those votes cast in real time.
01:31Can you tell us a little bit about what we were just hearing at the very end from Senator Thune,
01:37talking about three different procedures regarding the vote that would get us ultimately funding for SNAP, WIC,
01:48as well as the veterans for the entire fiscal year?
01:50It seems like there are three separate votes that are going to take place later this evening
01:54that would ultimately allow for the reopening of the government with his promise for the Senate to actually have the vote
02:00on Affordable Care Act subsidies, as he said, in the second week of December,
02:06which just before he spoke, we heard from Senator Sanders saying he doesn't believe that for one second
02:12because even if that vote takes place, there's nothing that Mike Johnson guarantees would go along with it
02:17and the president would sign it.
02:20Yeah, so a couple of threads to pull out there.
02:22One, without going too far into the weeds of legislative procedure in the Senate,
02:27which I will not bore everyone with, essentially we are on the first procedural step now.
02:31There are then a series of other votes to adopt the amendments and then actually do final passage of this bill.
02:37That could play out over a series of days or a few hours, depending on what is called Senate magic
02:41and folks agreeing to let things speed along.
02:45When it comes to the various components that you saw Thune talking about there,
02:49whether it be extending SNAP, veterans benefits, etc., that is because as part of this package that has been negotiated over the last few weeks,
02:58it teams up a stopgap measure to reopen the government through the end of January alongside a three-part bipartisan negotiated bill
03:08that funds portions of the government, including the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the SNAP program.
03:15There's a separate part of that cohort of bills that deals with the Veterans Affairs,
03:20and there's also a legislative branch funding bill in there as well.
03:24I'm working off memory here.
03:25So that's essentially what Thune was arguing, that this is going to now move that along and set up guardrails
03:33to essentially ensure that we're not going to be having a SNAP fight again in a few weeks
03:36when the government funding bill runs out at the end of January.
03:40That bill will be funding through the entire year for that program.
03:43When it comes to those assurances that you were hearing concerns about from Senator Bernie Sanders,
03:48this is the same concern that has existed since the first day of this shutdown.
03:51We are on day 40.
03:53The Democrats do not trust Republicans when they say,
03:57we will offer you a vote at a fixed time to extend those Obamacare premiums,
04:03excuse me, subsidies that prevent the premiums from skyrocketing.
04:07And some of this goes back to just the general feeling here on Capitol Hill,
04:10that there is very limited trust, particularly in the era of Trump 2.0,
04:14between the Democrats and the Republicans.
04:18Democrats have argued that health care is one of those points where they believe
04:21they are most trusted by the American public, and certainly polling does back that up.
04:26And now they are, you could see in Senator Schumer's comments there,
04:29just in the last 10 minutes, that he is shifting this from a,
04:33obviously, I'm not going to get what I want as part of this negotiation,
04:36he's saying he's voting no, to a, now this is going to be on the Republicans
04:40when it comes to next year, when the midterms come along.
04:44And we Democrats can point at the Republicans if they did not advance subsidies
04:47to lower the cost of health care and say, they don't care about your health care,
04:52we as Democrats do.
04:53You can already see the framing of the political election year argument starting to come into focus.
04:59Well, Kevin, it seems like, you know, to expect that voters will hang on to that exact framing for a year.
05:04Well, we will see how that all plays out.
05:08I'm curious, though, we just spoke to Congressman Auchincloss.
05:11We had Congresswoman Debbie Dingell on earlier, both of them in touch with colleagues,
05:16and a number of members of the House trying basically to send the signal to their counterparts in the Senate
05:22that they do not like this, they are not comfortable with this, they do not want them to fold.
05:27Do you have any sense, are they having any impact at all?
05:30Are there any senators in this sort of moderate cohort, this group, who are rethinking their positions at all?
05:39No indications at this point, but keep in mind, this is a very familiar story from just a few months ago
05:46when the Democrats in the Senate sided with Republicans to advance the funding bill then on a procedural vote.
05:52You saw massive outcry from House Democrats who felt that they had been betrayed by Democrats in the Senate.
05:59But that pain and frustration between the two sides of this building festered for quite some time.
06:06We saw some rebuilding of that trust.
06:08And quite frankly, the fact that Schumer has been holding out on this shutdown as long as he has,
06:14has produced some goodwill for those Democrats on the House side,
06:17that they feel that Schumer is standing with them in this fight against the Trump administration.
06:21Obviously, Schumer says he's against this, but if there's enough Democrats to move this along, I'll head over to the House.
06:29On the House side, keep in mind, it is a simple majority institution.
06:33So as long as there are enough Republicans, and albeit the margins are incredibly small,
06:36but if there are enough Republicans on the House side that are willing to advance,
06:40as you only need a couple Democrats to join with the Republicans to advance this bill,
06:44you might look to some of those that are in more battleground districts that have to,
06:48you know, that are going to come and say, well, I would love to fund health care,
06:52but also, you know, people are hurting back home,
06:54and it's not going to be a great look if the government is still not funded.
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