INTERVIEW: Majority Leader John Thune on the Democrats' Shutdown and the Senate GOP's agenda for 2026
“I would be very surprised in the end, when the government opens up, if he’s one of the votes to open it,” Senator Majority Leader John Thune told the Washington Reporter about his counterpart.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told the Washington Reporter that he doesn’t expect Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to vote to end Schumer’s namesake shutdown.
“I would be very surprised in the end, when the government opens up, if he’s one of the votes to open it,” Thune told the Reporter in his latest interview. “I think it’s going to come from rank and file Democrats.”
As Thune presses for a few more Senate Democrats to work with him and his GOP colleagues to reopen the government, he had a message for Americans who are frustrated with the Schumer Shutdown.
“Call Chuck Schumer,” Thune said. “If you live in a red state, and if you have two Republican senators, then they’re already in the right spot. But if you’re in a blue or purple state and you’re frustrated, call your two senators and tell them, ‘vote to open the government.’ It’s that simple. Schumer and Jeffries and others keep putting forward that Republicans are being unreasonable. I don’t think so at all. This is the way that we’ve done this.”
For weeks, Thune and his team have spotlighted the hypocrisy from Schumer and Senate Democrats on shutdowns, and he continued that in his latest remarks.
“Look at all Schumer’s quotes going back two decades, and everybody else,” he said. “We’re not going to negotiate with a gun to our heads. That’s the operative approach that they’ve taken previously. Now, all of a sudden they’re trying to put a gun to our heads. We need to open up the government and we’ll sit down and talk. We made that clear. I said, ‘I’ll offer you a vote, I’ll offer you a vote by a certain date, we’ll schedule a meeting with the president, and you all come down and talk to him, and we can figure out a path forward on this other on some of these other issues.’ But it starts with opening the government.”
Thune explained that this is driven in part by how Democrats are “very hierarchical…they’re very top down. They vest their leader with a ton of power that I don’t have…But I also think they’ve been browbeaten into submission.”
That top down nature, he said, manifested a few weeks ago when Senate Republicans were “trying to get votes for the defense appropriations bill. I thought the Dems actually might break and vote to get on it. And Schumer was having meetings in his office where he was pounding people to say no.”
Schumer’s style, Thune said, is “obviously [] very transactional…What you see is what you get. He is a New York politician in the true sense of the word, and you just have to go into every conversation knowing that he is going to be driven by politics.”
Thune takes the opposite approach; while Senate Democrats are increasingly fragmented about the shutdown, all Senate Republicans except for Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) are singing from the same song sheet.
Thune explained that that is because “everybody’s kind of bought into the ‘we succeed as a team’ approach. That concept seems to have resonated. We’ve also tried to keep people fully informed. And you talk about the collaborative style of information flow, it’s a stream that flows both ways, and we try to ensure that everybody is fully informed of what we’re thinking, and that thinking is shaped by what they’re thinking. We’ve really sought to make this a collaborative, cooperative process in which individual senators have their voices heard.”
Thune also has a partner in President Donald Trump, who he has spoken with on average once a day in the shutdown’s latest chapter.
“A lot of it is just spending time together, and part of it is trust,” Thune explained. The Reporter recently covered how Trump and Thune have been able to rely on the other in legislative battles. “In this business, trust is the most important commodity, and I respect his views on things, even when they differ with mine, and I might want to express that, but I try to do it privately, not in public, not airing it out…we realize our interests are aligned, our objectives are aligned. And if we’re going to be successful, we’re going to be successful working together as a team.”
Thune, who has been in the Senate for 20 years, has been through government shutdowns before — and while the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) that he helms has been hammering Senate Democrats alongside the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), he thinks that voters “will have moved on” from the shutdown drama by next year. However, he doesn’t understand how most Senate Democrats voted against a measure from Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) that would have paid everyone who is working.
“It just tells you how out of whack and how out of alignment their priorities are now with where I think most Americans are,” Thune said. “I think their priorities are very aligned with the far left base, which is represented by Zohran Mamdani in New York. That’s kind of their center right now; Democrats are searching for identity. They’re increasingly gravitationally pulled in that direction. They’re moving out of the mainstream where most Americans are.”
Once the shutdown ends, Thune laid out an ambitious GOP agenda.
“On health care, there was a good package at the end of last year, that got a bit dropped out because the whole bill went south, between when the president took office and the new Congress and everything,” Thune said of previous legislation. “But there was a bunch of PBM stuff in there. There’s a CSR, cost sharing reduction, bill that [Sen. Bill] Cassidy has bipartisan support on, which actually does lower premiums by about 15 percent. That is an alternative to doing this Biden COVID bonus payments, which are dramatically increasing the cost of health care. We want to do something that actually drives health care costs down. And I think there are a whole series of things you can do. We’ve got a pretty long list of reforms.”
“But,” Thune said, “they’re fixated right now on the enhanced subsidies passed in 2021 and extended in 2022 and which they put in place to expire at the end of this year. So it’s their problem they created, but they want us to fix it for them but all that does is just keep driving health care costs up. It doesn’t do anything to reform or provide an incentive to bring health care costs down. I think you could start with some of that, and there were bipartisan pieces of this, like the PBM piece, the cost sharing reduction piece, has not only big savings, but also pushes the premium down significantly.”
“It’s just got to be reformed and restructured,” Thune said of much of America’s health care system, “and the waste, fraud, and abuse extracted out of it. And we think there are ways to do that, but it’s not going to happen until after the government opens up.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Leader John Thune, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Leader Thune, I need to ask — are you familiar with the Swoon for Thune Caucus.
Leader John Thune:
No, who’s that?
Washington Reporter:
Suburban women, and female friends of mine. They do not think that you’re aging, especially as you go through this shutdown.
Leader John Thune:
Well, I don’t want to disabuse them of that notion.
Washington Reporter:
What is your messaging to Americans across the country and in South Dakota who are frustrated with the Senate and the House and all of this amidst the Schumer Shutdown?
Leader John Thune:
Call Chuck Schumer. If you live in a red state, and if you have two Republican senators, then they’re already in the right spot. But if you’re in a blue or purple state and you’re frustrated, call your two senators and tell them, ‘vote to open the government.’ It’s that simple. Schumer and Jeffries and others keep putting forward that Republicans are being unreasonable. I don’t think so at all. This is the way that we’ve done this. And you look at all Schumer’s quotes going back two decades, and everybody else; we’re not going to negotiate with a gun to our heads. That’s the operative approach that they’ve taken previously. Now, all of a sudden they’re trying to put a gun to our heads. We need to open up the government and we’ll sit down and talk. We made that clear. I said ‘I’ll offer you a vote, I’ll offer you a vote by a certain date, we’ll schedule a meeting with the president, and you all come down and talk to him, and we can figure out a path forward on this other on some of these other issues.’ But it starts with opening the government.
Washington Reporter:
Eventually, the shutdown will end. What agenda items do you want to do for 2026? Health care reform, for example, obviously, is a big topic here with ACA; that is one thing that Democrats are talking about, but also SNAP, Medicaid, PBMs, all of this got put on hold in October. What do you want to do when they do eventually come back to the table?
Leader John Thune:
On health care, there was a good package at the end of last year, that got a bit dropped out because the whole bill went south, between when the president took office and the new Congress and everything. But there was a bunch of PBM stuff in there. There’s a CSR, cost sharing reduction, bill that Cassidy has bipartisan support on, which actually does lower premiums by about 15 percent. That is an alternative to doing this Biden COVID bonus payments, which are dramatically increasing the cost of health care. We want to do something that actually drives health care costs down. And I think there are a whole series of things you can do. We’ve got a pretty long list of reforms. But, they’re fixated right now on the enhanced subsidies passed in 2021 and extended in 2022 and which they put in place to expire at the end of this year. So it’s their problem they created, but they want us to fix it for them but all that does is just keep driving health care costs up. It doesn’t do anything to reform or provide an incentive to bring health care costs down. I think you could start with some of that, and there were bipartisan pieces of this, like the PBM piece, the cost sharing reduction piece, has not only big savings, but also pushes the premium down significantly. If you look what happened in 2013 when the exchanges started up to today, health insurance premiums have increased 221 percent during that time period. Now, 90 percent of the premiums are covered by the federal government. If these expire at the end of the year, that goes down to about 80 percent of the cost of this. You’re still paying 80 percent of the cost of the premium support for people who have these policies. But I just think that you’ve got to do some things to rein it in. There’s no income limit, there’s no asset test. So people making $500,000 or $600,000 a year now are eligible for $0 premiums. People don’t even know they’re covered. The way the program is structured, the payments go directly from the federal government to the insurance companies. Insurance companies have this incentive to autoenroll people, to give them premium revenue coming in. And there are, we think, millions of people who don’t even know they have coverage because they just get autoenrolled. It’s just got to be reformed and restructured, and the waste, fraud, and abuse extracted out of it. And we think there are ways to do that, but it’s not going to happen until after the government opens up.
Washington Reporter:
Let’s look at your leadership style. You’ve been in this job for less than a year at this point, it’s probably a little more exciting than you were expecting. Senate Republicans are 99.8 percent unified behind your vision of this clean CR. How have you managed to keep such a wide ranging and diverse caucus singing for the same time, with the exception of one man with worse hair than you.
Leader John Thune:
Everybody’s kind of bought into the ‘we succeed as a team’ approach. That concept seems to have resonated. We’ve also tried to keep people fully informed. And you talk about the collaborative style of information flow, it’s a stream that flows both ways, and we try to ensure that everybody is fully informed of what we’re thinking, and that thinking is shaped by what they’re thinking. We’ve really sought to make this a collaborative, cooperative process in which individual senators have their voices heard. You never have 100 percent buy in. There’s always people that are on the outside, but I think for the most part, at least, people recognize the value of staying together
Washington Reporter:
Looking at the other side of the aisle in this chamber, and we’ll get to the White House after, what do you make of Schumer’s leadership style, in contrast to this? Right from beginning, some Democrats were already splintering, and it seems like fissures are being created, both by the votes that you’re making senators take, and also by the external pressure from government unions like what you saw this morning. How do you see what’s going on with them?
Leader John Thune:
They’re very hierarchical on their side. They’re very top down. They vest their leader with a ton of power that I don’t have. And we’re more entrepreneurial, independent thinking. They’re very ideologically aligned. But I also think they’ve been browbeaten into submission. There’s a lot going on; a couple of weeks ago, we were trying to get votes for the defense appropriations bill. I thought the Dems actually might break and vote to get on it. And Schumer was having meetings in his office where he was pounding people to say no. His style, obviously, is very transactional. What you see is what you get. He is a New York politician in the true sense of the word, and you just have to go into every conversation knowing that he is going to be driven by politics. In the past, leaders made hard votes because they thought it was in the long term, best interest of their party, their cause, their conference, their voters. This time around, the far left has been so influential, and I think Schumer is so afraid of them that it’s shaping his decision-making in a way that I would be very surprised in the end, when the government opens up, if he’s one of the votes to open it. I think it’s going to come from rank and file Democrats.
Washington Reporter:
We recently covered how your relationship with Trump has really evolved to both of your benefits from when you started this job to now, going through the One Big, Beautiful Bill, to now holding the line during the shutdown. Can you talk about his leadership during all of this when we see him signing, peace deals and trade deals, while Senate Democrats make no deals? How’s your relationship with him changed?
Leader John Thune:
A lot of it is just spending time together, and part of it is trust. In this business, trust is the most important commodity, and I respect his views on things, even when they differ with mine, and I might want to express that, but I try to do it privately, not in public, not airing it out. He hopefully has seen in me when I suggest something, an ability either to deliver or if I tell him that’s something we shouldn’t be doing, I tell him the reasons why. He’s a practical, realistic guy. He has big vision. He’s bold in both his things he wants to get done, his aspiration, but also in his style and approach to things. I’m very different. I’m boring, but I’ve talked to him four times in the last four days. Called him last night from Japan, called him day before from Malaysia. It’s a working relationship and I think we realize our interests are aligned, our objectives are aligned. And if we’re going to be successful, we’re going to be successful working together as a team. And that doesn’t mean we don’t disagree. We do. And everybody says, ‘well, you never stand up to him,’ I’m like, ‘oh yeah, I do.’ And there are lots of examples of that, but I do think in the end, he’s going to be a successful president, partly because I think he’s doing the right things, and he’s got a fearlessness that the American people believe in. They are confident in that he’s authentic. He doesn’t say things the way I would say them. But the American people think he’s doing the right things for the right reasons.
Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about how this is affecting South Dakota? What do you hear from your constituents?
Leader John Thune:
A lot of it is ag-related, like with the Farm Service Offices, so that was probably the most immediate impact, and we’ve been trying to work with the administration to get some of those offices functioning and open again. But sooner or later, when all the SNAP stuff hits and air traffic control, TSA, law enforcement, Capitol Police, that’s going to be a problem. I have Capitol Police as part of my security detail, and they don’t get paid like everybody else around here. That’s why I keep trying to go down there on the floor. In fact, that bill last week that Ron Johnson put up that would have paid everyone that’s working, I don’t know how they vote against that, but they did. It just tells you how out of whack and how out of alignment their priorities are now with where I think most Americans are. I think their priorities are very aligned with the far left base, which is represented by Zohran Mamdani in New York. That’s kind of their center right now; Democrats are searching for identity. They’re increasingly gravitationally pulled in that direction. They’re moving out of the mainstream where most Americans are.
Washington Reporter:
And my next question is, looking to the next election, the NRSC and SLF are already talking about those votes by Ossoff and others on the government funding. Do you think that this will even matter? Will you be talking about this next year? Or will people remember what Senate Democrats were doing right now, or what they weren’t doing?
Leader John Thune:
Probably not that much. I think by next year, people will have moved on. The news cycle changes constantly, especially in Trump era. He has a way of changing the narrative pretty much daily. As this plays out this year, and I just remember in 2014 and 2013 when it was us, and it was a shut down for a long period of time. There was all this talk about ‘can it affect the midterm elections?’ And then in 2014 we won a boat load of seats, so I don’t think it’ll have long term implications, but I also think it’s not good for the institution or for the country. I think it creates mistrust of government, and it makes it harder for us to do things together in bipartisan way that we need to do to keep the country functioning. My argument has always been, take this issue off the table, take shutdowns off the table, and let’s figure out how we can bridge our differences or get things done, get solutions, get results. There’s a lot of stuff we can do together that can be bipartisan. Permitting reform is an issue we should be doing. Appropriations bills obviously can be very bipartisan. Farm policy, for example, ag policy, is historically bipartisan, transportation policy, we’ve got to do a new highway bill next year. There’s a bunch of stuff we’re going to need to work together on, and this is just dragging everything out. They’re blocking everything we try to do, and it’s just setting everything back. And the American people, ultimately, are the ones who pay the price for it.
Washington Reporter:
Leader Thune, thanks so much for your time.