A cohort of Senate Republicans broke ranks with their leadership on Thursday to help Senate Democrats tank a massive funding package, and most aren’t planning on changing their minds.
Seven GOP lawmakers joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and all Senate Democrats to torpedo the six-bill funding package geared toward averting a partial government shutdown.
The gang of seven have varying issues with the package, including billions in earmarks, lack of legislation to prevent future shutdowns and the fact that the White House and Republican leadership are leaning toward splitting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill from the broader funding bunch.
Among the group was Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Rick Scott, R-Fla., Ted Budd, R-N.C., Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
Johnson told Fox News Digital, ‘There’s a bunch of reasons, [I] don’t even want to get into it,’ on why he voted no. When pressed, he said that billions in earmarks were a major problem and noted that the GOP conference had an agreement to not include any in funding bills.
‘Here we are in the majority,’ Johnson said, ‘and we’re loading it up.’
He was also unhappy with the DHS bill likely being stripped out from the package and angered over his legislation, the No Shutdown Fairness Act, not being included or even considered on the Senate floor.
‘I mean, we haven’t taken care of that yet,’ Johnson said. ‘Without addressing the root cause here, it’s like, you know, why do we continue to allow these shutdowns to even occur?’
‘I’m tired of it,’ he continued.
Scott was similarly incensed over earmarks, as was Budd.
A spokesperson for Budd told Fox News Digital that the lawmaker ‘has expressed longstanding concerns with earmarks in the Labor-HHS title, including multiple earmarks for both abortion providers and facilities that perform gender transitions on children.’
While some stew over the current state of the funding package, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans are going back and forth on the length of a possible short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR), specifically for the DHS bill.
Sources familiar with negotiations told Fox News Digital that Republicans are looking for a longer, six-week patch for the agency, while Democrats want a two-week CR. The hope is negotiations between Schumer and the White House land somewhere in between.
If a deal is struck, that means that the funding package would come back to the floor at some point on Thursday. From there, lawmakers could procedurally fast-track the process and wrap up late Thursday night, well ahead of the funding deadline.
But, that requires agreement from everybody, and the GOP rebels may not allow the process to move swiftly in order to strike deals on amendment votes.
Paul, who perennially votes against funding packages big and small, signaled he may slow down any momentum, unless he gets a vote on an amendment to carve out millions in ‘refugee welfare money.’
‘If we get at least a vote on that, we’ll agree to condense time,’ Paul said.
