Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. (Photo: Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer needed himself and the support of seven other Democratic colleagues to pass the Republican stopgap spending bill.
It turned out a total of ten Senate Democrats voted to advance the GOP measure Friday rather than trigger a government shutdown, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto.
“Shutting down the government gives President Trump and Elon Musk even more power to cherry-pick who is an essential employee, who they want to fire, and what agencies they want to shutter,” Cortez Masto said in a statement released prior to Friday’s vote.
“And a shutdown would force federal courts to slow work on lawsuits against this administration’s illegal actions,” Cortez Masto.
Nevada Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen campaigned for reelection last year touting both her willingness to break with her party and her ranking as one of the nation’s most bipartisan senators.
And Rosen did break with her party’s leader Friday, but not to be bipartisan. Rosen lined up with the more than three-fourths of Senate Democrats voting against the Republican stopgap spending bill.
“I cannot vote for an irresponsible and hyper-partisan bill that gives Trump and Musk even more power to hurt millions of Americans all while Congressional Republicans continue to push for cuts to Medicaid to pay for more tax breaks for the ultra-rich and giant corporations,” Rosen said in a statement issued by her office prior to Friday’s vote.
“Funding the government requires actually working together across party lines to find common ground, and the Republicans in power failed to do so,” Rosen said.
Earlier in the week, all three of Nevada’s House Democrats — Dina Titus, Steven Horsford, and Susie Lee — issued statements blistering the Republican bill after voting against it. The measure narrowly passed the House with all but one Republican vote.