Sen. Jon Ossoff (Ga.), the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the Senate, and his home state colleague Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) voted Thursday in favor of a Republican bill to pay essential federal workers, including military personnel, during the government shutdown.
Ossoff and Warnock joined Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) in voting for the Republican bill. The measure didn’t make any progress in a vote of 54 to 45. It took 60 votes to advance.
Ossoff and Warnock’s votes are notable because they voted 12 times against a House-passed bill to reopen the government and fund it through Nov. 21.
But they have repeatedly voted for a Democratic alternative to fund the government through Oct. 31, permanently extend increased health insurance premiums and restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.
Ossoff told reporters after the vote that “military personnel, TSA workers, air traffic controllers and other federal employees have no choice but to come to work and that they should be paid for that work.”
Ossoff voted for the Shutdown Fairness Act, sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), even though Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) called it “a ruse.”
Schumer warned it would give the Trump White House too much power to decide which federal workers get paid and which remain furloughed.
He argued the bill would extend the shutdown by taking pressure off Republicans to negotiate with Democrats to address rising health care premiums as part of a broader deal to reopen the government.
“The only way to pay every federal worker is for Republicans to get serious and sit down with Democrats,” Schumer said on the floor.
Johnson’s bill would pay vigorous military personnel, air traffic controllers, Transportation Security Administration employees, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents and other essential workers during the lockdown.
Ossoff said he agreed with Democratic leaders that Republicans need to negotiate a deal to extend increased health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, although he disagreed with Schumer’s admonition to vote against the Shutdown Fairness Act.
“It is indeed up to the White House, the Speaker of the House, to have a real bipartisan conversation to get us out of this impasse,” he said. “Health insurance enrollment is in nine days. My constituents can expect their health insurance premiums to go up 100, 200, 300 percent. We need to fix this now,” Ossoff said.
Asked about criticism that the GOP bill would not stop the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs, Ossoff said, “The government’s mass layoffs have been a disaster for Georgia,” noting that the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost a quarter of its workforce.
Warnock said Republicans are “tragically holding hostage the American people who need health care” and “holding federal workers hostage.”
He argued that federal employees forced to work without pay during the shutdown should not be “punished.”
“Just because they decided to shut down the government doesn’t mean these workers should be punished,” he said, referring to Republicans.
Warnock said he wants to provide some “relief” to federal workers, even though the Shutdown Fairness Act would not pay furloughed federal workers.
“Some of these people they’re holding hostage had a way to get some relief, I’m happy to be able to offer that to them,” he told reporters.
Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted against the proposal to pay essential federal workers, even though they have repeatedly voted with Fetterman for the House GOP-crafted “clean” continuing resolution to reopen the government.
Cortez Masto said she agreed with Schumer’s argument that the Shutdown Fairness Act would give Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought too much power to decide which federal employees get paid and which remain furloughed.
“This would give more power to the administration, which is why I was concerned about shutting down the government in the first place. That administration would decide who gets paid and who doesn’t, and I don’t think that’s how it should work,” she said.
