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Broken wrist prevents Rosen from voting on Senate bills

Humberto Sanchez
Humberto Sanchez
CongressGovernmentIndyBlog
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Recovering from an injury she sustained earlier this week, Sen. Jacky Rosen did not vote Thursday on competing proposals to end the record-long government shutdown, though her vote would not have been enough for either proposal to advance.

“Senator Rosen regrets that she was not able to travel to Washington, D.C. this week for votes,” Rosen spokesperson Jorge Silva said in a release. “She is at home in Las Vegas following doctor’s orders, recovering from an injury she sustained during the MLK parade this past Monday in Las Vegas.”

“The Senator is in good spirits and looks forward to returning to work next week,” Silva added.

Rosen injured her wrist while participating in the parade.

After the two Senate votes, which both failed to win the 60 ayes needed to advance, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer began meeting with Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to try to negotiate the next step toward trying to end the 34-day long shutdown, which has shuttered a quarter of the federal government, including nine Cabinet-level departments.

The proposal offered by President Donald Trump failed on a 50 to 47 vote. Trump’s plan would have provided $5.7 billion to help build a wall on the southern border that he called for during the 2016 election in exchange for a three-year extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA shields immigrants illegally brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to work. The proposal also would have extended for three years the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for certain nationalities. The TPS program allows in refugees from 10 countries that have suffered from natural disasters or other upheavals. 

Rosen’s office said she would have voted against the Trump plan. All but one Democrat voted against the bill, which opponents argued, among other things, included unwelcome changes to asylum process and neglected some African nations that have been eligible for TPS protections.

The other bill, authored by Democrats, would have funded the government at last year’s levels through Feb. 9 in order to give relief to the 800,000 federal workers who are not getting paid during the shut down while Democrats negotiate with Trump. The proposal failed 52-44, including six Republicans voting in favor. Rosen’s office said she would have voted for the Democratic bill.

Rosen’s fellow Democrat, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who voted against the Trump plan and for the Democratic proposal, called the shut down “senseless” and lamented the impact on federal workers.

“The Senate Majority Leader knows we can reopen the government today, yet he’s doubled down on the President’s false choice between building an expensive, ineffective border wall and ending this manufactured crisis,” Cortez Masto said in a release. ”It’s shameful, and the American people deserve better from their elected officials.”

The shutdown is affecting Nevada in various ways. Nevada’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the state housing authority are preparing to use reserve funds in lieu of federal dollars, Democratic Rep. Susie Lee said on the House floor Thursday, adding that 400,000 Nevadans would “face dire consequences” should those programs run out of money.

She also noted that Gov. Steve Sisolak had asked the state’s higher education board to protect the state’s college students from penalties and that Speaker Jason Frierson introduced a bill to protect federal workers from debt collectors and landlords.

“We are now stressing our state and local governments because our president and our Senate cannot step up and do their job,” Lee said.

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