WASHINGTON — On the second day of the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called it “stupid” and said a negotiation with his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Chuck Schumer, is not “going to accomplish a lot.”
In an interview with NBC News' Tom Llamas that will air Thursday night, Thune said Democrats will have another opportunity Friday afternoon to join Republicans in voting for a clean, short-term bill to reopen the government.
“I would suspect that we’ll probably cross paths on the floor; we’re both on the floor quite often. Our offices are not far apart. So if he wants to chat, he knows where to find me,” Thune said of Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader. “But I think at this point, right now, the issue ... is pretty straightforward. I don’t know that, you know, negotiation is going to accomplish a lot."
“This is a seven-week funding resolution just to keep the government funded so we can continue doing the appropriations work that we started earlier this year,” he added.
Negotiations between Republican and Democratic leaders have been at a standstill ever since they left a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday without a deal. Trump followed up the meeting by posting an insulting artificial intelligence video of Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and personal jabs have flown back and forth since.
The government shut down Wednesday for the first time in six years, with no signs of reopening.
Schumer and the Democrats demand that any funding bill include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. But Thune has insisted he will not negotiate on those tax credits until Democrats help Republicans reopen the government.
“I’m all about getting it back open again. I think shutdowns are— nobody wins, and I think honestly, for the most part, they’re stupid,” Thune said in the interview. “We really shouldn’t be shutting the government down, and it shouldn’t be taken hostage to do other policy things that are totally unrelated to funding the government.”
In a statement Thursday, Schumer suggested the American people were turning against Republicans, who control all levers of power in Washington.
“Americans see it clearly: They know Trump governs by chaos and welcomes this shutdown — and that Republicans are following his orders to maximize pain. That cruelty is already backfiring," Schumer said. "Americans blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, and the longer they drag it out, the deeper the pain and that blame will grow."
Pressed by Llamas, Thune defended Trump and his top aides who have said they plan to move forward this week with permanent federal layoffs due to the shutdown, as well as revoking billions in federal funding for projects in blue states like New York, the home state of both Schumer and Jeffries. Thune said none of those things would happen if the Democrats helped reopen the government.
"Tom, let's come back to the basic premise: This is avoidable," Thune said, adding that the Democrats "are playing with fire by doing this."
He added that Trump's budget director, Russell Vought, and other administration officials would make spending decisions during the shutdown based on where "their political priorities lie."
"It’s very simple: You avoid this by just voting to keep the government open," he said.
The Senate did not hold votes on Thursday in honor of the Yom Kippur holiday. It has scheduled votes at 1:30 p.m. ET Friday on dueling Republican and Democratic plans to reopen the government. Yet those same funding bills have already failed three times before.
If the proposals are defeated for a fourth time, Thune said earlier Thursday, the Senate will most likely not hold any votes over the weekend. That means a shutdown would last at least until Monday, when the House also plans to be back in town following a two-week recess.
“They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to keep, to open up the government,” Thune told reporters in the Capitol. “And if that fails, then we have the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back. We’ll vote again on Monday.”
