John Thune

Thanks, Ben.

Always good to be with you.

I mean, I think right now we've got to vote later this evening to open up the government again.

This will be the 12th.

I assume the Democrats will vote it down again.

Tomorrow we're going to give them a different, something else to vote on.

We gave them a defense appropriations bill to vote on last week, which would have funded the troops, and they block voted against that.

This one tomorrow is a Ron Johnson bill, which essentially what it does, Ben, is it basically just pays everybody who's working.

So anybody in the federal workforce, you know, furloughed employees will obviously get back paid, but anybody today who is working in any government agency would get paid.

And I don't know what they're going to do, but as you suggest right now, it looks like they're sort of digging in.

And I'm not sure why.

I think this is a real losing hand for them to play.

It certainly is.

costing people all over the country big time, particularly federal employees.

And the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets.

But they, at this point, at least right now, don't seem prepared to want to come to their senses and actually do the right thing for the American people, which is to keep the government open.

Right, and they created this crisis, this COVID cliff, if you will, and these enhanced subsidies, which did go into effect, as you point out, during the pandemic.

It was supposed to be a response to that.

The pandemic's long over.

They created the expiration date.

So this is really a problem of their own making.

But the broader point is the right one, and that is that everything that Obamacare has done, including these enhanced subsidies,

has added to the cost of insurance policies.

In fact, if you look from 2013 to 2025 to where we are today, insurance rates in the exchanges, the Obamacare exchanges, have gone up about 221%, if you can believe that.

And so it's done nothing but inflate the cost that people are paying for health insurance across this country.

And that's because the fundamental program is flawed.

And then the enhanced subsidies were flawed too.

They didn't have an income limit.

So you got people are making five, $600,000 a year qualified.

They have zero premium policies.

So people don't even know they're covered.

Insurance companies are incentivized to auto enroll people.

And so it's become a moneymaker, you know, just a,

factory for insurance companies to make money, because there are a lot of people out there that they enroll who don't even know they have coverage.

And so you've got this flawed structure with no incentive to constrain costs.

And as a consequence, you've got just the costs going up in astronomical rates every year.

So it's their problem.

They created it.

Now they're expecting Republicans to try and solve it for them.

And that's their price for opening up the federal government.

And it's a price that is a very stiff one because you're looking at to do it the way they want to do it.

It's about $400 billion.

Well, I think that legislative – and by the way, the executive calendar, which is different.

So that's judges.

All the executive branch nominees are on the executive calendar.

And we did change the rules.

We changed the rules most recently here just about six weeks ago on nominees, Trump executive branch nominees that Democrats had just completely filibustered and shut that process down.

So we opened it up.

The legislative filibuster is designed to protect the voice of the minority in this country and it's been used effectively for a long time to do just that.

It has prevented a lot of bad things from happening.

Republicans have used it.

in the past.

And most recently, the Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster for what they called their elections reform bill, which basically was consolidating all of elections in Washington, D.C.

It would have taken power to regulate elections away from the states, would have done away with voter ID.

And had it not been for Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, they would have succeeded in doing it at that time.

They voted against it.

But the Democrats have made it clear they would love to get rid of the filibuster to enact their agenda, which includes statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., an expanded Supreme Court, up to 15 seats there, abortion on demand.

As I said, federalizing our election system, those are just a few of the list of horribles that they put out there.

And they all campaigned on that.

But if we tried to do it now, all 47 of them, I can guarantee you would block vote against it.

So it's situational for them.

It's all about political power.

And now that they are on the outside, they're gonna use this to their advantage.

I just think that we ought to be able to do this the old-fashioned way, and that is open up the government by just having five more Democrats vote with us.

And that's all it's going to take.

So we shouldn't be in this.

Everything is harder than it should be right now because of Trump derangement syndrome.

But I still think at some point there are going to be some rank-and-file Democrats who break with their leadership and do the right thing for the country, and that is open up the government.

Right.

We cleared the backlog.

The Democrats have completely shut it down.

I mean, we were we were forced to be here.

We've been here more days, more hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, at least the last 40 years.

as a result of the Democrats' obstruction.

And so we did make a change in the rules that enables us to start processing some of the executive branch nominations in batches, and that's enabled us to catch up.

But there are more coming.

And on the judiciary side, we're doing some this week.

We're going to do a circuit court at the end of the week nom.

We're doing district court judges.

We had about 50 of those that were in the backlog.

And we still have to do those the old-fashioned way.

We can't do those in batches.

As you know, the judiciary is an enormously important part of what we do here, and we want to make sure that we are filling those positions with people who are constitutionalists, who understand that the role of a judge is not to write the laws, but to interpret and apply them.

And so those are the kinds of judges that we're looking for, and it's going to be really important for us to continue to fill the positions.

Fill the judiciary and the executive branch, President Trump's nominees to the executive branch to be able to implement the agenda that he ran on and that the American people voted for.

Right.

Well, and I saw some of your coverage from over there, which I thought was great, Ben.

And I just think that it is remarkable what the president has accomplished here and what his team has accomplished.

And it builds on the success of the Abraham Accords.

Obviously, we're far from being in a state where we can declare total victory because Hamas is still active and

In my view, they need to be completely obliterated or at least disarmed so that they are not a factor in governing the Gaza Strip.

So there's still work to be done, but the way in which this administration has worked with the Israelis, with our Arab allies in the region,

to bring about an outcome that I think nobody thought achievable just a few weeks ago, and that is getting these hostages released.

And then, you know, now obviously the hard part begins and trying to come up with a security force to maintain security there and figure out what the next step is in order to make that a place in the world that,

people want to visit that enjoys some of the success and prosperity that folks in the neighborhood have.

I think there's some tremendous opportunities there.

Wouldn't have been possible had it not been for President Trump and his leadership.

So congratulations to him, but we still have a lot of work to do, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and our president working together with our allies in the region.

Hopefully we'll continue to stabilize that area and make it a place that's attractive for people to live and work and invest.

Well, obviously, funding the government the old-fashioned way through the appropriations process.

This is a short-term funding resolution that buys us some time, but we need to do the full year.

But I think there are a lot of opportunities out there.

There are things like permitting reform.

There are things like AI, which has become a very, very big issue in our lives.

We've got to do a farm bill.

We've got to do a highway, a transportation bill.

There's a lot of work for Congress to do.

that has been put on the, you know, kind of on the back burner while the government's been shut down.

But, you know, the most important thing that we do is, you know, take care and make sure that we protect the country.

I always tell people if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation.

So we did get the defense authorization bill across the finish line in the Senate.

We tried, as I said earlier, to put the defense appropriations bill on the floor, which funds all those priorities, and the Democrats blocked it.

But taking care of America's national security interests in what is a very dangerous world is going to continue to be a big priority for us.

And then, like I said, there are lots of other legislative priorities that I think, and there are some areas where we can work together.

There's some things that we can do

in a bipartisan way with Democrats, but we've got to get past this government shutdown and the Democrats holding the federal employees hostage, basically, if you will, to try and get a bunch of unrelated policy things that they want to get done.

I'm perfectly happy to have the conversation and talk with them about some of those things, but we can't do that while the government's being held hostage.

As you all know, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass an appropriations bill. So we're going to need some Democrats to vote for it.

As you all know, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass an appropriations bill. So we're going to need some Democrats to vote for it.

As you all know, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass an appropriations bill. So we're going to need some Democrats to vote for it.

We have a lot to do, this Congress. Border security, extending the tax relief Republicans delivered during the first Trump administration, lifting burdensome and expensive government regulations to help American businesses and families flourish.

We have a lot to do, this Congress. Border security, extending the tax relief Republicans delivered during the first Trump administration, lifting burdensome and expensive government regulations to help American businesses and families flourish.

We have a lot to do, this Congress. Border security, extending the tax relief Republicans delivered during the first Trump administration, lifting burdensome and expensive government regulations to help American businesses and families flourish.