Two Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they expected that an amendment vote would ultimately be held, which would clear the way for the enactment of the spending bill. Some Republican senators were absent on Thursday evening, meaning the amendment was expected to fail regardless of Mr. Manchin’s decision.
Several senior Republicans who have objected to the mandate have warned that the dispute is not worth a government shutdown, particularly as the nation confronts a new coronavirus variant.
The requirement, which the Biden administration had set to go into effect in January, has become ensnared in court challenges. In November, a federal appeals court kept a block on it in place and declared that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had overstepped its authority in issuing the rule.
“I don’t think shutting down the government over this issue is going to get an outcome,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Fox News. “It would only create chaos and uncertainty, so I don’t think that’s the best vehicle to get this job done.”
But it would take only one senator lodging an objection to slow the spending bill’s passage and force a lapse in government funding.
“This is so silly, that we have people who are anti-science, anti-vaccination, saying they’re going to shut down government over that,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, visibly exasperated, said at her weekly news conference. “We’re not going to go for their acts of anti-vaccine, OK?”
“So if you think that’s how we’re going to keep government open,” she added, “forget that.”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/us/politics/government-shutdown-congress-spending-deal.html
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