The Senate rejected a bill that would permanently end government shutdowns, just hours before funding was set to lapse at midnight Wednesday.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the "Eliminate Shutdowns" Act to end the familiar spectacle of lawmakers squabbling over policy priorities until the last minute.
It's happening again this year, with Democrats sending the government into a shutdown after rejecting a GOP funding bill that did not meet their healthcare demands.
Republicans have pushed for a "clean" stopgap spending bill, while Democrats want immediate extensions to Obamacare subsidies and a reversal of the Medicaid cuts in Trump's sweeping domestic policy law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
As Congress hurtled toward a shutdown this week, Senator Johnson proposed ending the routine fiscal brinkmanship on Capitol Hill once and for all, but his proposal was rejected 37-61.
Johnson's bill would keep the government afloat with automatically renewing stopgap bills while the regular appropriations process continues.
“This simple bill could be a game changer,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "With government funding and functioning assured, Congress would no longer have to spend weeks and months arguing over how to keep government departments open after failing to pass appropriation bills.”
14 Republican senators joined every Democrat to vote no on Johnson's bill, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak.), and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.).
Ultimately, just three Democrats in the Senate voted to approve a GOP-backed bill to avoid a government shutdown on Tuesday night.
Senators Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Angus King voted for the continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government operating at current funding levels. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also voted no.
Republicans pointed to the Democratic defections as a sign that the party will break sooner or later. But Democrats, under pressure from their base to fight President Trump, have so far refused to blink as Trump threatens to fire federal workers after funding lapses at midnight on October 1.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought blamed the shutdown on Democrats' “insane policy demands," adding it’s “unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict.”
“[I]t is now clear that Democrats will prevent passage of this clean [continuing resolution] prior to 11:59 pm tonight and force a government shutdown,” Vought wrote in a memo to government agencies.
The last government shutdown lasted for 35 days from December 2018 through January 2019 after Congress refused to fund Trump's border wall. The shutdown was the longest ever at the time.
