Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the government shutdown is on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s shoulders because he brought a bill to the Senate floor that he knew couldn’t pass.
Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that McConnell knew he would have to get 60 votes on the continuing resolution to keep the government open for four weeks. However, McConnell knew that bill wasn’t going to get support from the full Republican Senate caucus, let alone the nine Democrats that would have had to jump partisan lines to advance the bill.
“Let’s be clear, and I know people are sick and tired of the blame game, and I understand that. But here is the reality. It takes 60 votes in the United States Senate to get anything done,” Sanders said to host Jake Tapper.
“The other night, Mitch McConnell walked on to the floor of the Senate, and he knows the rules better than anybody. He did not have 60 votes. He barely had 50 votes. When you’re in that situation, Jake, what it requires, and what we should be doing, is negotiating.”
Senate Democrats have complained they’ve been excluded from much of the legislative negotiations since Republicans took control of the government in January 2017.
While there were bipartisan negotiations leading up to the shutdown Saturday morning, Democrats were not willing to vote for a bill that didn’t include protections for about 800,000 illegal immigrants brought to this country as children, known as Dreamers.
President Trump ended the federal program that protects those Dreamers from being deported, but delayed it until March 5. Sanders said it’s time now for lawmakers to figure out a solution before that deadline comes and goes.
“The wall was a great idea in the 15th century when the Chinese built the Great China Wall,” Sanders said. “I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense now, but I’m willing to sit down in a room and do what the American people want and what the American people want is to provide legal status to the Dreamers and a path toward citizenship. Let’s sit down and do that.”
