After initially signaling that Democrats would not provide the votes needed to pass the continuing resolution to keep the government open, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has folded.
NYT (“Schumer Will Clear the Way for G.O.P. Spending Bill, Breaking With His Party“):
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, broke with his party on Thursday and lined up enough Democrats to advance a Republican-written bill to keep federal funding flowing past a midnight Friday deadline, arguing that Democrats could not allow a government shutdown that many of them have demanded.
During a private luncheon with Democrats, Mr. Schumer stunned many of his colleagues by announcing that he planned to vote to allow the G.O.P. bill to move forward, and indicated that he had enough votes to help Republicans break any filibuster by his own party against the measure, according to attendees and people familiar with the discussion.
It was a turnabout from just a day earlier, when Mr. Schumer proclaimed that Democrats were “unified” against the legislation, and a remarkable move at a time when many of the party’s members in both chambers and progressive activists have been agitating vocally for senators to block it in defiance of President Trump.
In a speech hours later on the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer announced his plan to vote to move forward with the Republican measure, which would fund the government through Sept. 30. He argued that if Democrats stood in the way, it would lead to a shutdown that would only further empower Mr. Trump and Elon Musk in their bid to defund and dismantle federal programs.
“The Republican bill is a terrible option,” Mr. Schumer said in his evening speech. “It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
In a shutdown, Mr. Schumer said, “the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise that they would ever be rehired.”
He also warned that if the government closed, Mr. Trump and Republicans would have no incentive to reopen it, since they could selectively fund “their favorite departments and agencies, while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.”
Schumer published a NYT guest essay titled “Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.
[…]
Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.
This, in my view, is no choice at all.
[…]
As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse.
First, a shutdown would give Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk permission to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have wide-ranging authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff members with no promise they would ever be rehired.
The decisions about what is essential would, in practice, be largely up to the executive branch, with few left at agencies to check it.
Mr. Musk has reportedly said that he wants a shutdown and may already be planning how to use one to his advantage.
Second, if we enter a shutdown, congressional Republicans could weaponize their majorities to cherry-pick which parts of government to reopen.
In a protracted shutdown, House and Senate Republicans could bring bills to the floor to reopen only their favored departments and agencies while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.
Third, shutdowns mean real pain for American families.
For example, a shutdown could cause regional Veterans Affairs offices to reduce even more of their staffs, further delay benefits processing and curtail mental health services — abandoning veterans who earned, and depend on, those resources.
A shutdown could continue to slash the administrative staffs at Social Security offices — delaying applications and benefit adjustments and forcing seniors to wait even longer for their benefits.
A shutdown could further stall federal court cases and furlough critical staff members — denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months or years.
Finally, a shutdown would be the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda.
Right now, Mr. Trump owns the chaos in the government. He owns the chaos in the stock market. He owns the damage happening to our economy. The stock market is falling, and consumer confidence is plummeting.
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.
I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open.
This all makes sense in an alternative reality where government agencies aren’t being shut down by executive fiat and federal workers fired left and right without any regard for the law. With a shutdown, Democrats could use the filibuster to force compliance. Passing a CR through September removes that leverage for the next six months.
Beyond that, Schumer has been at this for decades and is surrounded by a team of savvy staffers. He surely didn’t have some grand revelation over the last two days about how a shutdown would affect the balance of power in Washington.
No, rather clearly, this is a calculation that Democrats might get blamed for the shutdown. As it is, all of the cuts and chaos are on the shoulders of Trump and Musk. And maybe that’s the right longer-term play. But, again, it essentially guarantees six more months of chaos at a minimum.
UPDATE: POLITICO Playbook depicts a generational divide on this among Congressional Democrats:
NOT THE FIGHT DEMS WANTED TODAY: Ahead of a midnight deadline to fund the government … at a moment when escalating tariffs and raging economic uncertainty have put the Dow on track for its worst week in two years … as President Donald Trump is expected to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to carry out mass deportations as soon as today … with the president due to speak this afternoon at the Justice Department amid ongoing concerns about its independence and the rule of law … Democrats are seized by a debate over Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s reluctant support for the House GOP’s continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown.
The summary: On Tuesday, the House approved a stopgap that would keep the federal government funded through the end of the fiscal year, 217-213. … On Wednesday, Schumer announced that the House-backed CR did not not have the eight Democratic votes needed to overcome a filibuster — which some observers interpreted to mean that Schumer was going to go all-in on opposing the CR. … Yesterday, Schumer announced that he will support the CR.
What Schumer said: “As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse,” he wrote in a Times op-ed, launching into four primary reasons for that calculation: (1) A shutdown would give Trump and Elon Musk the ability to “destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now;” (2) Republicans could use the shutdown to “cherry-pick which parts of government to reopen;” (3) it’d mean “real pain for American families,” and; (4) it would distract from the “chaos” reining across government and the economy.
Cue the outrage. While it’s almost a certainty that there are a sufficient number of Senate Dems who privately share Schumer’s thinking, you sure didn’t hear from them in the ensuing maelstrom of reactions.
Today, you’re going to want to watch a few different things …
1. The split within the Senate Dem caucus. Support for the CR does not break down neatly along ideological lines. Yes, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will vote for cloture. Yes, the most prominent lefties are nos. But it’s striking how many early-tenure Democratic senators — especially those from states Trump carried in 2024 — have lined up in opposition to the CR across a wide spectrum of views.
Consider this: In the hours after Schumer told his colleagues his position on the CR, Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) all reiterated their opposition to the CR. Add to that mix a few freshmen from bluer states, like Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), and you start to see a breakdown that is perhaps less ideological than generational. These younger, newer members view the world differently, Senate insiders told Playbook last night.
2. The House Dem reaction. One of the most surprising developments of the last 12 hours is that late last night, House Democratic leadership — repeat: not backbenchers — felt compelled to release a fiery statement that does not give Senate Dems who support the CR much of any room for cover.
From the statement: “The far-right Republican funding bill will unleash havoc on everyday Americans, giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk even more power to continue dismantling the federal government,” read the joint release from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar. “House Democrats will not be complicit.”
Thought bubble: When was the last time that fellow Brooklynites Jeffries and Schumer seemed on such different pages in such a public manner?
And the caucus seems unified: “Virtually every swing district House Dem walked the plank to vote NO for a reason,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) noted last night. The gentlewoman from Queens was at a House Dem retreat in Virginia, where some members were “so infuriated with Schumer’s decision that some have begun encouraging her to run against Schumer in a primary, according to a Democratic member who directly spoke with Ocasio-Cortez about running,” CNN’s Sarah Ferris reports. “The member said that Democrats in Leesburg were ‘so mad’ that even centrist Democrats were ‘ready to write checks for AOC for Senate,’ adding that they have ‘never seen people so mad.’”
3. If not fight now, then when? On some level, this is a debate about what an effective resistance looks like. “In a political economy that requires attention and friction, we are passing up a huge opportunity to fight an unpopular president and his billionaire buddy,” posted Mike Casca, AOC’s chief of staff. “Fights define you. FDR knew this. Harry Reid knew this.”
But but but: Former Reid right hand Adam Jentleson sees it quite differently: “Schumer is right. Dems are understandably spoiling for a fight but this was not it. … Fight — but pick smart fights.”
What would a “smart” fight look like? The “oppose the CR” argument is more or less as Casca laid it out. But there are, of course, other ways to see it. Matt Yglesias offers a different view: The House Dems’ approach failed to bring Republicans to the negotiating table because they ruled out giving any votes to the CR. As a result, the party-line bill had to placate conservative Republicans, and as such, shifted “public policy to the right somewhat.” Senate Dems were left with no cards, and keeping the government open is the less-bad option.
Or, as Senate Republicans see it: “The Democrats have A or B: Keep the government open or yield the authority to the president,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), told my POLITICO colleagues Jennifer Scholtes and Megan Messerly.
That’s the calculation Schumer made: “Musk has already said he wants a shutdown, and public reporting has shown he is already making plans to expedite his destruction of key government programs and services,” Schumer said on the Senate floor last night. “A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country.”
All I know is that, if the roles were reversed, Senate Republicans would have extracted more—which is to say, any—concessions before going along.
