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.