Democrats Revolt After Chuck Schumer Says He’ll Vote To Advance GOP Bill To Keep Government Open
UPDATE, Friday: Donald Trump congratulated Chuck Schumer for his decision to advance a GOP bill to keep the government open — but it’s hardly the kind of praise that the Senate Democratic leader needs.
Fellow lawmakers and party activists are irate at what they see as a massive cave to Republicans as a time when Elon Musk is slashing the federal government and Trump is enacting retribution on political enemies. D.C.’s non-voting representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, says that the funding bill, which would avert a government as shutdown as it would finance spending through the end of the year, is an act of “fiscal sabotage” on a city that voted more than 90% in favor of Kamala Harris. District officials point to a provision that would force them to make more than $1 billion in cuts for the rest of the fiscal year.
“Republicans’ partisan spending bill turns the federal government into a slush fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) wrote on X. “It’s unthinkable that any Senate Democrat would hand them a blank check by voting for cloture.”
Others, like Jack Schlossberg, mocked Schumer’s move.
Schumer announced Thursday night that he would vote to advance the GOP bill later today. He acknowledged that the bill is “very bad,” but said that the consequences of a shut down would be “much, much worse.” He suggested that it would accelerate Trump and Musk’s cuts and closure of federal agencies.
“The risk of allowing the president to take even more power via a government shutdown is a much worse path,” Schumer wrote in a New York Times op ed.
He added, “In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen and which to keep closed instead of debating the damage Mr. Trump’s agenda is causing.”
After Schumer’s announcement, House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar released a statement that did not directly reference Schumer’s decision but said, “House Democrats will not be complicit.”
Republicans still need to line up a half dozen more Democratic votes to advance the bill this afternoon, with a deadline of midnight before the government closes.
PREVIOUSLY: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday that he will vote to advance a Republican bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, potentially averting the threat of a government shutdown.
As Democrats bashed the bill as one that will slash health and veterans benefits and remove more than $1 billion from the budget of Washington, D.C., Schumer warned that a shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk even more opportunity to decimate federal agencies.
“While the [funding] bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said.
Government funding runs out at midnight Saturday.
His decision could motivate other Democrats to vote to advance the bill to the floor on Friday morning. Republicans need seven or eight votes to reach the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate on the legislation, something that gave Democrats some leverage to block the legislation.
Throughout the day today, a number of House Democrats urged Senate colleagues to stick together, and a number of them did vow to vote against sending the bill to the floor.
But Schumer said that “for Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift. It would be the best distraction he could ask for from his awful agenda right now. Donald Trump owns the chaos in the government. He owns the chaos in the stock market. He owns the damage happening to our economy from one end of the country to the other.”
Schumer said that with a shutdown, congressional Republicans “would weaponize their majorities to cherry pick which parts of the government to reopen in a protracted shutdown.”
