Democratic senators and the TSA agents they’re refusing to fund have one thing in common: Neither are showing up for work. There is also one key difference between the two: TSA agents haven’t been paid since February, while Democrat senators are still collecting their $175,000 salaries.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) was forced to adjourn a meeting after not one of the sitting Democratic senators on the committee showed up. Senate committees require a quorum to proceed, meaning that at least one member of the minority party must be present to conduct business.
“I want to thank the Republican members of this committee for showing up to work today, and I look forward to the time when the Democrats do the same,” Cruz said, and proceeded to adjourn the meeting.
At the time, the committee was addressing bipartisan bills such as the Alex Gate Safety Act — which would establish a new safety standard after seven-year-old Alex Quanbeck was crushed by a schoolyard gate — and the Stop The Scroll Act, which mandates social media platforms to display a mental health warning to children using the platform. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight members of the Committee had co-sponsored the legislation on Wednesday’s schedule.
Ranking minority member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) put out a statement attributing her absenteeism to a procedural disagreement. “Committees can only function when members have a voice and their amendments are fairly considered,” she said. “This committee has never done what the majority tried to do today. The committee has to allow amendment votes as we did with Senators Lee and Cruz when they proposed hundreds of amendments when they were in the minority.”
A Democratic committee spokesperson added context to Cantwell’s statement, saying, “At the last minute, we learned that Chair Cruz planned to roll all democratic amendments on all bills into one en bloc vote.” The change in procedure means all the amendments would be voted on all at once instead of individually.
The spokesperson told The Daily Wire this would prevent members from offering and debating amendments separately and that if normal procedures were followed, she and other Democrats would have attended to work on the legislation.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), another member of the committee, voiced concern that no-shows could become a pattern. “I fear that this is going to spread like a cancer around the senate and we’ll see additional committees suffer the same fate as the Commerce Committee did today.”
Lummis told The Daily Wire, “In case my Democrat colleagues need a reminder, the American people pay their salaries.” She added, “Today’s display of shameful — and quite frankly childish — behavior by Senate Democrats is an embarrassment. While my colleagues refuse to fund the Department of Homeland Security and force thousands of employees to work without pay, they cannot be bothered to show up for the job they were elected to do. The American people deserve better, and should be justifiably outraged.”
Tensions between the parties remain elevated as Congress works to reach a funding deal to end the partial government shutdown, which has left the Department of Homeland Security unfunded since February. Republican lawmakers want to fund DHS as it currently operates, while Democrats are pushing for reforms as a condition of funding. Those proposed reforms include requiring judicial warrants for immigration enforcement activities rather than relying on administrative warrants, which are currently signed by ICE officials rather than judges. Newly sworn-in DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has indicated support for some reforms, but not all of those on the Democratic wish-list.
Democrats have also called for ICE officers to stop wearing masks during operations and to avoid conducting enforcement activities near “sensitive” locations.
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