Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s bill to fund SNAP and WIC was going to be trouble for Republicans. SNAP has become the centerpiece of the shutdown as Republicans plan to starve 42 million Americans in a bid to jack up health insurance premiums on 23 million Americans.
Luján brought his bill to fund SNAP to the Senate floor, where he asked for unanimous consent, which is where the Senate votes unanimously to pass legislation without debate or a recorded vote. Under unanimous consent, the legislation passes as long as no Senator stands up and objects.
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The idea that any Republican would object to children, the elderly, and disabled Americans who are already in poverty would object to these getting nutritional assistance was already dangerous, but Republicans decided to make the damage even worse by having the Majority Leader stand up and argue that Democrats are to blame because the won’t trade food assistance for making healthcare more expensive for 23 million people.
After Thune whined about Democrats not giving Republicans what they want and asked Luján to modify his request so that the Senate could pass the House’s CR, Luján spoke and took apart the Republican argument.
In the Senate, there are decorum and rules, so the language will sound more formal and polite. Senators are also not allowed to directly address each other or engage in personal attacks, but Luján got his point across to Thune and the Republicans.
Luján said:
I respect the Majority Leader, the Republican leader. I see some of his staff in the room as well. People that I’ve worked with, they know when I work with them and when, when others don’t. But I understand. The words that were being used today to spin an argument as to why there should be justification for 40 million people to go hungry.
You know, Mr. President, I, I get in trouble sometimes ‘cause I use language from that little farm that I still call home but, I’ve 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 my life, even, even after I was elected to the US House of Representatives, when he’d leave a shovel by the front door, when I’d go home on a weekend and he’d leave my rubber boots there to make sure I’d put ‘em on because we’re gonna go clean the barn.
We raised cattle, we raised sheep, we 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 that I usually call it when I’m not on the Senate floor. I also taught it’s important to tell people the truth and be honest with the American people.
What the good leader left out when he was talking about the number of votes that Republicans voted on under a Democratic president, under a Democratic majority in the Senate, and in the House, was that there was not a shutdown. We negotiated. People came to means. As a matter of fact, a lot of my democratic constituents told me Democrats gave way too much to those Republicans when you were in the majority.
Well, when you have to negotiate, when you hold power, when you are in the majority, you meet people, you pull ‘em in, you know, it’s how folks, you know where my office is. You all have heard me talk about the late governor Bruce King Cattle farm out in New Mexico. He used to tell us when people can’t figure out what’s going on, you lock ‘em up in a barn and you don’t let ‘em out until they figure out how to get along.
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