WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader thinks it is time for Republicans to move on from trying to defund Obamacare.
“Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else?” Reid said at a press conference after the Senate passed a short-term resolution to fund the government and fund Obamacare.
The Senate voted Friday along party lines to amend the House-passed version of the government funding resolution, which defunded Obamacare. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spoke for over 21 hours straight on Tuesday night and into Wednesday in an attempt to convince his fellow Republicans and any Democrats who would join him vote against the procedural move that allowed the bill to be amended.
The bill now goes back to the House. If the two chambers cannot come to an agreement on a plan to fund the government past Monday, the government will shut down on Tuesday.
Reid made clear that if the House amended the bill to look anything like its first offering, the Senate would refuse to pass it, and in the time required to amend it and pass it back, the government would likely shut down.
“They need to accept what we just did,” Reid said. “We are going to accept nothing that relates to Obamacare.”
It was time, Reid said, for Republicans to get over it.
“Let them find something else to be weird about,” he said.