Senator Ben Ray Luján’s bill to fund SNAP and WIC would spell trouble for Republicans. SNAP has become the focus of the shutdown as Republicans plan to starve 42 million Americans in an effort to raise health insurance premiums for 23 million Americans.
Luján brought his bill to fund SNAP to the Senate, where he asked for unanimous consent, where the Senate votes unanimously to pass legislation without debate or a recorded vote. The legislation passes by unanimous consent as long as no senator rises and objects.
The idea that any Republican would object to children, the elderly, and disabled Americans already living in poverty objecting to them receiving nutritional assistance was already dangerous, but Republicans decided to compound the damage by having the majority leader stand up and argue that Democrats are to blame because they don’t want to trade food aid for making health care more expensive for 23 million people.
After Thune whined that Democrats weren’t giving Republicans what they wanted and asked Luján to change his request so the Senate could approve the House of Representatives’ CR, Luján took the floor and dissected the Republican argument.
Decorum and rules apply in the Senate, so that the language will sound more formal and polite. Senators are also not allowed to address each other directly or make personal attacks, but Luján made his point clear to Thune and the Republicans.
Lujan said:
I respect the majority leader, the Republican leader. I also see some of his associates in the room. People I’ve worked with know when I work with them and when others don’t. But I understand. The words used today to make an argument as to why there should be a justification for 40 million people going hungry.
You know, Mr. President, I sometimes get in trouble for using the language of that little farm I still call home, but I learned the rules of decorum on the Senate floor, so I won’t use them here.
But some of the lessons my father taught me early in life, even after I was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, when he left a shovel by the front door, when I went home on the weekend and he left my rubber boots there to make sure I put them on because we were going to clean the shed.
We’ve raised cattle, we’ve raised sheep, we’ve raised all kinds of animals, and after those animals eat, they make something. Some of us use it to fertilize our land. So people call it manure. I won’t refer to it as the language I usually mention when I’m not on the Senate floor. I have also learned that it is important to tell people the truth and be honest with the American people.
What the good leader left out when he talked about the number of votes that Republicans voted on under a Democratic president, under a Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, was that there was no shutdown. We negotiated. People came up with resources. By the way, many of my Democratic voters told me that the Democrats gave way too much to those Republicans when you were in the majority.
Well, when you have to negotiate, when you have the power, when you’re in the majority, you meet people, you bring them in, you know, that’s how people know, where my office is. You’ve all heard me talk about the late Governor Bruce King Cattle in New Mexico. He always told us that if people don’t know what’s going on, you lock them in a shed and don’t let them out until they know how to get along with each other.
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