John Rutherford to Senate: Revoke 60-vote cloture, end the government shutdown

The first shutdown of the federal government during the Donald Trump administration began Friday at midnight.

On Sunday afternoon, Florida Politics talked to Rep. John Rutherford about the impasse, just hours before a 3 p.m. House Conference as Congress attempts to reach a short-term fix to fund the government at least through Feb. 8.

Rutherford is irked with the “Schumer shutdown” and what he sees as politics being played regarding linking the DACA issue with a Continuing Resolution, with “Senate Democrats trying to tie DACA into the budget with an artificial deadline,” as DACA doesn’t expire until March 5.

“All over a false deadline,” Rutherford repeated, saying — not for the first time — that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “needs to do away with the 60-vote cloture rule.”

“The American people gave Republicans a majority in the Senate,” Rutherford asserted, and Senate leadership must “exercise [that Republican] majority” and not forfeit their prerogative to Democrats.

Rutherford’s constituents bear real impacts from the continued shutdown, especially those involved in defending the country.

The first-term Republican’s Northeast Florida district has “thousands of military families.” Many of their soldiers are deployed in foreign theaters and their “families back home aren’t getting paychecks.”

“We have men and women in harm’s way who aren’t getting paid,” Rutherford said, adding that his own niece, part of an overseas Secret Service detail for Vice President Mike Pence, is doing that vital job without getting paid.

“These Senate Democrats are putting illegal aliens before 320 million Americans,” Rutherford said, including the aforementioned military families and 9 million children enrolled in CHIP.

Rutherford says that six or seven states are “going broke” on the program, and need federal funding “immediately.”