{"id":40045,"date":"2026-04-23T17:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/40045\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T17:59:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:59:19","slug":"senate-republican-predicts-democrats-will-shut-down-government-right-before-the-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/40045\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Republican predicts Democrats will shut down government \u2018right before the midterms\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) predicted on the Senate floor that his Democratic colleagues will find a reason to block funding legislation and trigger another government shutdown<\/a> \u201cright before the midterms\u201d to sow chaos in Washington before Election Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my Democratic friends are going to shut down the government right before the midterms,\u201d Kennedy said on the floor Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope I\u2019m wrong and if I am \u2014 please make me wrong \u2014 I will come to this floor and apologize,\u201d Kennedy said to his Democratic colleagues during a speech shortly before senators held a marathon session of votes to pass a budget resolution.<\/p>\n

Kennedy made the comments while expressing his desire to offer an amendment to the budget resolution to instruct the Homeland Security Committee to add to the upcoming budget reconciliation package legislation to either automatically implement government stopgap spending measures in case of a funding lapse or to pay essential federal workers during a shutdown.<\/p>\n

He explained on the Senate floor that his amendment would instruct the Homeland Security panel to take Sen. James Lankford\u2019s (R-Okla.) Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, which would automatically implement two-week funding stopgaps if Congress can\u2019t agree on annual funding legislation, and Sen. Ron Johnson\u2019s (R-Wis.) Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay essential federal workers during a shutdown, and add them to the reconciliation package.<\/p>\n

Kennedy said he wants to \u201cmarry those bills so we\u2019ll be ready in case anybody tries to do a shutdown on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is one of a growing number of GOP senators who thinks another government shutdown is likely when federal funding expires at the end of September.<\/p>\n

Kennedy pointed out earlier in the week that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) faced a furious backlash from his party\u2019s base when he voted with Republicans in March last year for a House-passed government funding measure to avoid a shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchumer did the right thing for the country last March and helped us get out of a shutdown. You saw what happened. Schumer\u2019s not Bambi\u2019s baby brother. He did that once, he touched the stove, got burned. He was never going to do it again,\u201d Kennedy told reporters Monday.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) predicted on Tuesday<\/a> that Schumer would shut down the government again on Sept. 30, about a month before Election Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Sept. 30, funding for the federal government will end. Chuck Schumer is not a creative guy, he\u2019s not hard to predict. Last year, right before the election, what did Schumer do? He shut the whole government down, and the Democrats believe that shutdown helped them politically, and it benefited them in New Jersey and Virginia,\u201d Cruz said on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will wager, right now, $100, that Schumer intends \u2014 on Oct. 1 \u2014 to do the same thing, to shut the whole federal government down for a month, so that on Election Day \u2026 the government is shut down, you have four-hour lines again in airports, and the Democrats can say, \u2018See, the Republicans are in charge, they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing,\u2019\u201d Cruz predicted.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) predicted on the Senate floor that his Democratic colleagues will find a reason to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[504,26046,19485,1968,383,26047,1080,1739],"class_list":{"0":"post-40045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chuck-schumer","8":"tag-chuck-schumer","9":"tag-democratic-colleagues","10":"tag-election-day","11":"tag-federal-government","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-government-funding","14":"tag-government-shutdown","15":"tag-john-kennedy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116455326565731411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}