[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 171 (Thursday, October 16, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7154-S7155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLOTURE MOTION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 136, H.R. 4016, a bill making 
     appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal 
     year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes.
         John Thune, Jon Husted, Roger F. Wicker, Joni Ernst, 
           Susan M. Collins, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Crapo, 
           Tim Sheehy, Mike Rounds, James E. Risch, Cindy Hyde-
           Smith, Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, 
           Steve Daines, Lindsey Graham, John Boozman.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to H.R. 4016, a bill making appropriations for the 
Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, 
and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. 
Cassidy), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North 
Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Tillis) would have voted ``yea.``
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) 
is necessarily absent.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 50, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 575 Ex.]

                                YEAS--50

     Banks
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Boozman
     Britt
     Capito
     Collins
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Curtis
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fetterman
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Husted
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Justice
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     McCormick
     Moody
     Moran
     Moreno
     Mullin
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Ricketts
     Risch
     Rounds
     Schmitt
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shaheen
     Sheehy
     Sullivan
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--44

     Alsobrooks
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt Rochester
     Booker
     Cantwell
     Coons
     Durbin
     Gallego
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     Kim
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lujan
     Markey
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schiff
     Schumer
     Slotkin
     Smith
     Thune
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Welch
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Budd
     Cassidy
     Cornyn
     Duckworth
     Tillis
     Tuberville
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). On this vote, the yeas are 50, 
the nays are 44. Three-fifths of the Senate, duly chosen and sworn, not 
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.
  The motion was rejected.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                          Motion to Reconsider

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have a motion to reconsider.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.


                           Government Funding

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the Democrat party is the party that will 
not take yes for an answer. We offer Democrats a clean, nonpartisan CR, 
no Republican policies for them to swallow, nothing for them to object 
to; they said no. We offer to accommodate their healthcare demands by 
guaranteeing them a vote on their proposal if they vote to reopen the 
government; the answer is no.
  OK. Fine. So we thought if they don't want to fund the government via 
continuing resolution, we will give them the chance to fund the 
government a different way, by attempting to move forward with regular-
order appropriations bills. And, once again, the answer was no.
  Democrats just voted to block the fiscal year 2026 Defense 
appropriations bill, a bill, I would add, that passed the Senate 
Appropriations Committee by a robust bipartisan margin--26 to 3 I think 
it was.
  That is right. After voting last week for an authorization bill to 
increase troop pay, Democrats just voted against the bill that would 
actually pay the troops.
  We have to ask the question, Why?
  Because to quote a recent news story--this is a direct quote--
``voting to proceed with the defense bill relinquishes some of the 
party's leverage.'' Relinquishes some of the party's leverage? I mean, 
who really cares, right, if the troops are paid as long as the 
Democrats are able to get what they want.
  Now, I offered up--and I had conversations with Democrats here on the 
floor--that if we could get on the Defense appropriations bill, the 
interest they have in adding other bills I would certainly accommodate. 
And I suggested that that was the business model that we adopted when 
we passed the first three-bill package. We got on the MILCON-VA 
appropriations bill, and then we worked collectively, both sides, to 
try and clear, adding the Ag appropriations bill, the leg branch 
appropriations bill, and we tried to add the CJS appropriations bill--
which was objected to by one Member on the Democrat side--but that is 
how we fashioned getting these appropriations bills on the floor and 
getting them voted on.
  Now, if anything should be clear by now--if anything should be clear 
by now--it is that I am interested in doing a normal appropriations 
process, unlike what happened when they had the majority, which was the 
Appropriations Committee will report bills out--11 of the 12 last year. 
Not a single one was brought to the floor of the Senate.
  We have done three bills. We are trying to go to conference on them. 
They are blocking that.
  So now we bring up the Defense appropriations bill, something that 
should get 80 votes on the floor of the Senate, that I said came out of 
the committee 26 to 3, and they are blocking it.
  Now, there is a path forward here to do appropriations: Get on the 
bill. Then we will try to add other appropriations bills as we work 
both sides to clear up objections, concerns that people have.
  The fact of the matter is, they didn't have to block us even moving 
to the bill because there are multiple opportunities--60-vote threshold 
opportunities--for them to block it later on if they don't like what 
happens.
  This is politics. If anything was needed to demonstrate just how 
fundamentally uninterested Democrats are in

[[Page S7155]]

supporting our troops and defending our country, just take a look at 
this vote. Mere months ago--I say mere months ago--Democrats were 
complaining about all the damage shutdowns do to hard-working 
Americans. I literally could fill the rest of this hour with Democrat 
quotes from the past few years about the devastating impacts of 
shutdowns.
  Now, Democrats couldn't care less. They are happy to sacrifice any 
American--evidently, any principle--to their political goals. Democrats 
like to position themselves as the party of the little guy and the 
defender of hard-working Americans. But, as this vote makes clear, whom 
do Democrats really care about? Democrats.

                          ____________________