Daines on Fox News: Democrats Should Stop Holding the American People Hostage and Open the Government

• November 7, 2025

U.S. SENATE - U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined Fox News America Reports to discuss the ongoing government shutdown and a path forward.

Daines on the historic obstruction caused by Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats:

Well, look, we've offered this clean CR. We need to extend it now beyond November 21st because we've been shut down now for 38 days. We're kicking out [the CR] probably to January sometime to give us enough time to do the appropriations of spending bills. We also want to put in maybe three appropriation bills as part of this package here, bipartisan bills. But sadly, I have never seen something like this. This is new territory for us. Unprecedented obstruction. We saw that on the nominations earlier this year. Now it's on fundamentally funding the government.

Daines on the Democrats blocking pay for federal workers:

If you saw what just happened minutes ago, Senator Ron Johnson went down and offered by unanimous consent to basically pay all the federal employees up until the first of November. Give them their back pay so they can pay their rent, pay for their groceries. Democrats objected to it. Leader Thune may put it on the floor his afternoon and dare Democrats to go on a roll call vote to not pay employees right now who deserve their paychecks. It's playing hardball right now. It needs to happen.

Daines on the possibility of ending the filibuster:

I don't disagree with the President's argument. I was with him last night. It's very persuasive because if you look at the history, what happened in the last Congress, it was just two Democrats that saved the filibuster. It was Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They are no longer in the Senate. As soon as Democrats take control, they will nuke the filibuster. That is a foregone conclusion. The problem we have is that we have probably 10-15 Republican Senators who feel strongly about protecting the institution and they are hard noes. They are virtually immovable on this issue and so it's best we're going to find a different path forward to resolve this crisis.

Daines on whether Republicans will take the Democrats' deal and extend ACA subsides:

No, we're not going to do that. Look, we've said, open up the government, get it opened up. If you look at the history of shutdowns they have had before, you never reward shutting down the government. You don't reward this behavior. Open up the government. This is a complicated issue that needs to be solved through the bipartisan negotiations. So, I agree with Chuck Schumer when he said, we've got to form a bipartisan group to figure out ways to lower health care costs. Extending these subsidies does nothing to lower health care costs. It only continues to increase it. These subsidies are paid directly to the insurance companies. Twenty percent of these subsidies are fraudulent. We cannot perpetuate that. It will not fundamentally change the trajectory of health care costs. That's the issue. These subsidies only continue to increase health care costs. These subsidies go to insurance companies. We have an appetite to sit down and put the reforms in that are needed. They'll actually lower health care costs. Remember, Obamacare is up nearly 100 percent since it passed back in 2014. Barack Obama said it's going to decrease health care costs, 25 percent. They're actually up 100 percent and private insurance costs have risen much, much less than Obamacare. So, this just continues to advance a terrible system that's not affordable for the American people.

Daines on how to end the government shutdown:

What we can do is extend the CR. We'd have to punt it out to at least next January. And commit to the part that Chuck Schumer did say we'd agree to is to set up a structure of bipartisan negotiations to actually reduce health care costs, making health care affordable. But not until we go to the government open back up again. That's going to take some time, thoughtful deliberation, but we've got to solve this problem. You can't shut the government down to use as leverage here to try to get this outcome.

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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Gabby Wiggins