SOURCE: AJC

WASHINGTON — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson broke with most of his Republican colleagues on Thursday afternoon.

Isakson sided with the Democratic plan to reopen federal agencies as he vowed to work with a bipartisan group to find a resolution to the wall impasse.

According to AJC, the third-term senator’s unexpected vote topped off a rough day on Capitol Hill in which the Senate shot down two proposals to end the shutdown.

Both Isakson and Georgia’s other Republican senator, David Perdue, backed a White House-supported measure that would have set aside $5.7 billion for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall and reopened the government. That proposal ultimately fell 10 votes short of the 60 needed to advance.

AJC further reported that Isakson and Perdue diverged on the Democratic plan, which would have funded shuttered agencies for two weeks and paid for new natural disaster recovery efforts — but omitted wall funding. The proposal won over six Republicans but also fell shy of advancing.

Perdue, a Trump ally up for re-election in 2020, voted against the stopgap and said it was “unacceptable” that Senate Democrats rejected the White House-backed bill and “every opportunity to compromise in good faith.”

Isakson, who has voiced support for beefed up border security and a border wall, has recently expressed frustration about the human toll of the 34-day shutdown. He announced plans Thursday afternoon to work with a bipartisan group led by Maryland Democratic U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin to find a way out of the impasse.

“All I’m doing is trying to do my job,” Isakson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Immigration is a huge issue. The shutdown is a huge issue. We had a hurricane that took out most of our pecan industry this year. … We’ve got lots of things we need to be addressing, and I’m trying to get us back to work and stop this silly back-and-forth, ping-pong politics.”