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ANNABELLE GORDON \/ REUTERS<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks at a news conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump pressed Republican senators today to terminate the filibuster rule in a bid to end the longest government shutdown in history, but his call to shatter the longstanding institutional hallmark of the Senate appeared to have little immediate effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to get the country open. And the way we\u2019re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster,\u201d Trump told the senators, who were gathered at the White House for a breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s possible you\u2019re not going to do that, and I\u2019m going to go by your wishes. You\u2019re very smart people, you\u2019re good friends, but I think it\u2019s a tremendous mistake,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIt would be a tragic mistake. Actually, it\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune described jettisoning the filibuster as a mathematical impossibility, saying there are not enough Republicans to do away with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know where the math is on this issue in the Senate, and it\u2019s not happening,\u201d Thune told reporters after returning from the White House. The South Dakota Republican expressed optimism that ongoing bipartisan talks would reach a deal to end the shutdown \u201cin the course of the next few days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump spoke a day after the Senate failed for the 14th time to pass a bill to fund government operations through Nov. 21, with Democrats demanding that Republicans negotiate an extension of expiring tax credits to help low-income Americans pay for private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n
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The filibuster requires 60 of the Senate\u2019s 100 members to agree on most legislation before it can pass. But Republicans hold only 53 Senate seats and one Republican opposes the funding bill, meaning they cannot reopen the government without support from at least eight Democrats. So far, only two Democrats and an independent who caucuses with them have been willing to back the funding measure.<\/p>\n
While Trump has called for the filibuster\u2019s elimination before, Republicans have warned that doing away with the rule would undermine the Senate\u2019s traditional role as a place of bipartisan compromise and could enable a future Democratic majority to push through its own partisan agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made a really good point on how maybe it takes just Republicans to do it on our own,\u201d Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said of Trump\u2019s message.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there\u2019s a lot of us that really think the Senate was designed in the first place to find a long-term stable solution to problems. So we\u2019ll listen to what the president has to say. But now it\u2019s time for our Democrat colleagues to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
During today\u2019s gathering, Trump played down concerns that the Democrats could take power.<\/p>\n
He argued that if the Senate eliminates the filibuster, Republicans will be able to maintain power by jamming through what he sees as popular legislation.<\/p>\n
Trump told senators that the ongoing government shutdown was impacting the stock market, as well as airlines and SNAP food benefits for low-income Americans. He blamed Republican losses in elections around the country on Tuesday in part on the government shutdown, which he said had not hurt Democrats in the way he thought it should.<\/p>\n
The shutdown is now in its 36th day, eclipsing the previous record of 35 days, set during Trump\u2019s first term from 2017 to 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANNABELLE GORDON \/ REUTERS Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks at a news conference Tuesday on Capitol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,2413,3,111,452,453],"class_list":["post-273526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-national-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}