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Senate Democrats unveiled their alternative to Republicans' plan to reopen the government that would see an extension to expiring Obamacare credits for one year, and are asking that Republicans just say "yes."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced the plan in dramatic fashion on the Senate floor Friday afternoon with a backdrop of the Senate Democratic caucus in a bid to show a tangible version of the newfound unity among Democrats since their Election Night sweep earlier this week.
Schumer argued that after 14 failed votes on the House-passed continuing resolution (CR), "It's clear we need to try something different." He offered to attach a one-year extension to the expiring Obamacare subsidies, and to create a bipartisan committee that could negotiate further on how to deal with the subsidies after the government reopened, a clear nod to the GOP's position that negotiations wouldn't happen until the government reopened.
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"Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes healthcare affordability," Schumer said. "Leader Thune just needs to add a clean, one-year extension of the [Obamacare] tax credits to the CR so that we can immediately address rising health care costs. That's not a negotiation. It's an extension of current law, something we do all the time around here."
"Now the ball is in the Republicans' court," he continued. "We need Republicans to just say ‘yes.’"
Whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Republicans will accept the offer remains in the air. Republicans are set to meet Friday afternoon and are expected to discuss the Democrats' olive branch.
Initially, Thune had planned to hold a vote on the House-passed plan as a means to amend it and attach a trio of spending bills in a package known as a minibus to jumpstart the government funding process.
However, that plan was canned Friday morning after Thune charged that the "wheels came off" of ongoing bipartisan discussions with Senate Democrats on the minibus and a path forward.
It also comes after Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made a bid to have his bill that would ensure that federal workers and the military would be paid during this shutdown and future shutdowns move through a fast-track process known as unanimous consent that doesn't require a full vote of the Senate.
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However, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., blocked the bill – despite it being amended to include furloughed federal workers into the mix – over lingering concerns that it still gave President Donald Trump too much power to pick and choose "which federal employees are paid and when."
That move prompted a fired-up Thune to question why exactly Peters, and more broadly Senate Democrats, would object to the bill, given that it would solve a major pain point of the shutdown. He said that lawmakers would vote on the bill on Friday.
"In other words, we're going to keep federal employees hostage," Thune said of Peters' objection.
"It's about leverage isn't it, that's what ya'll have been saying," he continued.
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