Congressman Chuck Fleischmann blamed Senate Democrats after the Senate’s failure to pass the Continuing Resolution (CR), putting a government shutdown into place.
He said, “I cannot fathom how Senate Democrats, knowing the severity of the issues in question, acted with such insensitivity using our children and our military as pawns, putting party over country.
"Due to their decision, our service members and country will suffer tremendously. Furthermore, about 9 million children risk being kicked off health insurance impacting over 70,000 children in Tennessee alone.
"I stand ready to work tirelessly to reopen our government and put our country back on the path forward.”
Senator Lamar Alexander commented after he said "Senate Democrats voted down a bill to extend funding for six years for Tennessee’s CoverKids and fund other government programs until Feb. 16."
He said, “Tennesseans elected me to make the government work for taxpayers, not to shut it down. We are close to agreement on legislation to increase military spending, extend the children’s health insurance program, lower insurance rates for self-employed people, provide disaster relief and begin to deal with immigration issues. Democrats are voting to shut down the government; I’m voting to keep it open and solve problems. There is no excuse whatsoever for shutting down the government.”
Georgia Senator David Perdue said, “This Schumer Shutdown is absolutely ridiculous. It is totally irresponsible for the Democrats to use government funding as a bargaining chip. Democrats have created a false deadline by trying to tie illegal immigration to government funding. As I’ve consistently said, these are two totally different issues and should be dealt with separately. Ever since I was sworn into the United States Senate,
"I have been talking about the total collapse of the budgeting process. Only four times in the past 43 years has this budget process actually funded the federal government. These repeated failures have manifested into a pattern of short-term funding patches, continuing resolutions, that hamstring our military.
"This short-term mentality in Washington has got to stop. When Congress fails to complete its budget, the best outcome is that six or eight people determine how to spend a trillion dollars of discretionary spending. Clearly, Congress’ funding mechanism does not work and will never work. We are doomed to this cycle of fiscal irresponsibility until Congress reworks this budget process to successfully meet its Constitutional responsibility of funding the federal government.”
Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA-14) said, “I supported the short-term government funding bill that passed the House on Thursday, which delays harmful Obamacare taxes and also extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years. The House did its job. The sole reason the government shut down is because Senate Democrats refused to join Senate Republicans to pass the House’s funding bill. It takes 60 votes to pass government funding legislation in the Senate, and there are only 51 Republicans.
“Democrats are holding the entire government hostage for a completely unrelated issue that doesn't have an immediate deadline – DACA. There have been high-level negotiations over illegal immigration and border security for months. There’s just not an agreement yet.
“The bottom line: few people understand why Democrats want to disrupt life for Americans, put national security at risk and put sick children at risk over illegal immigration. There’s no pressing deadline and no reason for them to abandon talks.”