Congress
Senate GOP rejects Democratic funding proposal
Senate Republicans voted Friday to reject a Democratic bill to fund the government past the end of the month in the first of dueling partisan votes on avoiding an Oct. 1 shutdown.
Senators voted 47-45 to reject the bill, which pairs government funding through Oct. 31 with health care policies and restrictions on President Donald Trump’s ability to hold back spending approved by Congress.
The Democratic proposal was widely expected to fail — it needed 60 votes to pass, which would have required support from more than a dozen Republicans. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed to get GOP senators on the record rejecting some of the health care ideas wrapped into the bill, including a permanent extension of soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies.
Schumer on Friday said the two bills “truly crystallize the contrast between the two parties.”
“Senators will have to choose to stand with Donald Trump and keep the same lousy status quo … or stand with the American people, protect their healthcare and keep the government functioning,” Schumer said.
With the Democratic proposal being rejected, the Senate will now vote on the House-passed stopgap bill, which funds the government until Nov. 21. That GOP-led proposal is also expected to fail because it will need 60 votes, which would require help from at least seven Democratic senators. It won a single Democratic vote in the House, from Maine Rep. Jared Golden.
Democrats have vowed to oppose the GOP bill because Republicans didn’t negotiate with Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who have repeatedly pressed their GOP counterparts for a meeting to no avail.
Republicans, while suggesting they are open to talking, have bristled at the idea that they need to agree on a deal to extend the health insurance subsidies as part of the September funding bill since the credits do not expire until the end of the year.
“The contrast between the Republican bill and the Democratic bill is glaring. The Republican bill is clean, nonpartisan, short-term continuing resolution to fund the government to give us time to do the full appropriations process. And the Democrat bill is the opposite,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said ahead of the vote.
Republicans were initially loath to give Democrats a vote on their proposal, but Democrats played procedural hardball by objecting to the Senate’s ability to leave for a scheduled one-week break. Republicans agreed to the side-by-side votes Thursday evening, as first reported by Blue Light News.
Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.
The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.
The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.
“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”
Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.
He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,
Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.
Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.
“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.
Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.
Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”
Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.
Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.
“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”
Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday released text of legislation intended to ban the use of Flock surveillance cameras and other license plate readers.
Flock has faced severe public backlash against the surveillance technology following reports that police officers misused the technology to track women, and it has the largest network of license plate readers across the U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) hosted a hearing last month probing its potential misuses, although the company’s CEO Garrett Langley did not appear.
The latest bill, unveiled Friday and named the Ban Flock Act, would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers or accessing data from the technology and prevent federal grants from funding states and local governments that use automated license plate readers.
“At a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” Sanders, who has positioned himself as a leading progressive voice on AI technology, said in a statement. “We cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement.”
Ocasio-Cortez similarly condemned the surveillance capabilities of the technology and said the bill would “enforce our constitutional right to privacy and protect Americans from both corporate and government surveillance.”
“No one should have this unchecked surveillance power at their fingertips,” Merkley added.
Republicans have introduced similar efforts to regulate license plate readers, such as Hawley’s Stop Flock Abuse Act, which would require audits and limits on unauthorized searches.
Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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- October
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