The Senate once again fails to end the shutdown
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., joins ‘America Reports’ to discuss the sixth failed vote to reopen the government and the fundamental issues being debated that are keeping it closed.
If the troops aren’t paid, the Schumer shutdown will cross a red line in the eyes of most normal Americans.
The men and women in uniform received their paychecks on Oct. 1 and are expected to receive their next check on Oct. 15. Unlike almost everyone in the federal government who is currently not being paid due to the showboating of Chuck Schumer and most Democrats in the Senate, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and the Coast Guard do not have the option to quit because they have not been paid.
Any other civil servant affected by the ‘Schumer shutdown’ can simply resign and look for other work. That’s uncomfortable and stressful and probably a crisis for people in some cases, but even that unpleasant option isn’t on the table when you sign up for the military. Our all-volunteer armed forces are not given a get-out clause that kicks in if the government doesn’t fund itself for political theater. The troops are suffering, and they don’t have the freedom to say, “That’s it. I’m out of here.”
MORE LAWMAKERS SAY THEY ARE REJECTING PAY CHECKS AS GOVERNMENT LOCKOUT CONTINUES
The youngest, least experienced members of the military don’t get paid much initially as they move up the ranks. An enlisted man or woman with less than two years of entry-level service earns $2,319.00 per month. An “E-2” receives $2,733 in the first two years. The scale increases by rank and years of service, but the youngest, least experienced men and women in the military tend to live paycheck to paycheck, especially if they have a spouse and children, as many of them do.
Senators are not too concerned about their friends in the Senior Executive Service, or even at the top of the GS scale, say at 14 or 15, not getting paid. The lowest pay for an “SES” member is over $150,000 per year and their salaries can be as high as $225,000 per year. A federal employee at the GS-15 level is paid between $123,000 and a maximum of $183,000.
No one wants to miss a paycheck, but the federal government’s senior employees should be able to weather the disruption without losing their car or having their utilities turned off.
But a young sailor deployed far away, say in the Pacific, with a husband and a few babies at home? There are tens of thousands of such men and women, and it’s time for Schumer to think about them.
As any serious person watching this absurd government shutdown knows, Schumer is keeping the government shut down with the goal of staving off another verbal attack by his likely primary opponent in 2028: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Schumer’s personal political dilemma should not put more strain on our military than it already is. They signed up to serve, not to be pawns in electoral politics, for no substantive reason whatsoever.
Democrats are working on talking points that demand that Republicans and President Donald Trump “negotiate,” which the Republican Party and the president are willing to do on a host of issues, at the same time as the “regular” proceeds for all twelve of the appropriations bills — meaning the House and Senate each pass their versions of those bills and then go to a “conference committee.” negotiate the final version of each bill.
It is rare for one of the twelve appropriations bills to be completed by the end of the budget year – September 30. It is increasingly common for the government to operate under “continuing resolutions” or “omnibus spending bills,” neither of which serves anyone very well.
But real progress has been made this year, and most, if not all, of the appropriations bills will be done by the time a “clean CR” would expire in a few weeks. Negotiations on the specifics of these appropriations laws are ongoing.
But shutting down the government does not increase Democrats’ influence.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS ADVICE
Schumer must have figured out that he’s gotten his entire party into a political box canyon. Under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to approve the clean CR. So it is up to five additional Democrats to join the 52 Republicans and Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and John Fetterman (Pa.) plus independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) in voting for the House-backed Republican emergency funding bill.
(Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will not vote for a funding bill that does not reduce spending and a “clean CR” does not reduce or increase spending. Paul’s “no vote” is the factual truth test for the Republican Party’s claim that the CR does not cut a single dollar of spending from existing levels. It does not.)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
When the government reopens, negotiations will begin, but this will not be a one-way street. If Democrats want subsidies for preferred constituencies, expect Republicans to get their list of demands as well.
Trump won the 2024 election – decisively. The Republican Party has won Congress. Just because the left wing of the Democratic Party feels wronged does not mean it is entitled to the power it lost in free and fair elections.
CLICK HERE TO BY HUGH HEWITT
