Senate Democrats can end the government shutdown Monday if they vote on a procedural bill, because if the Senate approves it, the House will as well, Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday.
"The Democrats will have a chance to open up the government that they shut down at noon today," the Wisconsin Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "If they open the government at noon, the House will pass this bill."
Ryan also called the shutdown "totally pointless and needless, while blaming it on Senate Democrats.
"Senate Democrats did this. Senate Democrats are the ones who can stop this, and that's at noon today." said Ryan.
The vote will be on whether to end debate on a stopgap bill while extending a deadline that will allow work to continue through Feb. 8 to reach agreement on a funding bill.
Meanwhile, Democrats are holding out for protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.
"A minority in the Senate, Senate Democrats, are using their filibuster to shutdown the government," Ryan told Fox News, adding that "we know that there are enough votes to open the government. If it actually came to a vote, there would be more than 50 votes to open the government back up, but Senate Democrats are using their filibuster, making it 60 votes and shutting down the government."
What's "weird," however, is that Democrats "don't oppose the underlying legislation."
Republicans do favor fixing DACA, Ryan said, but want to "fix it more comprehensively so we don't have another DACA problem in a few years. That's the point, but that's what is bizarre to me."
The shutdown comes, Ryan said, while bipartisan negotiations were still taking place. He also pointed out that during the 2013 shutdown, both Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer approved using a shutdown, but now, he does not think they knew what they were getting themselves into.
"What we're saying is open the government, we'll get back to the negotiations that were already underway, that they blew up when they shut down the government," said Ryan.
Democrats are also "counting on confusion," said Ryan.
"People are casually paying attention," he said, as the White House and both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans.
"A minority in the Senate, the Senate Democrats are using their filibuster to shut down the government," said Ryan. "Let me say it really clearly, we saw this last night at about midnight, we know there are enough votes to open the government. If came to a vote, there would be more than 50 votes to open the government back up, but Senate Democrats are using filibuster, making it 60."
Republicans also don't want to end DACA, or to "kick kids out" of the United States, but at the same time, they don't want to encourage more immigration," said Ryan. "We need to make sure we control immigration. We need to make sure we're securing our borders and fixings immigration laws. So we don't have another 700,000 kids in five years when we have another DACA mess."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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