Schumer, Democrats try to save face, blame GOP for possible government shutdown

Congressional Democrats are trying to get on the same page and display a unified front after threatening to derail the government funding process.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., met behind closed doors Tuesday night, along with the top Democrats in the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, to plot a course forward in the forthcoming government funding fight.

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The meeting came after Democrats in the upper chamber overwhelmingly supported the first government funding bill to hit the Senate floor, one that would fund military construction and Veterans Affairs. Ahead of the vote, Senate Democrats had signaled they may vote against the bill and further obstruct the appropriations process because of highly partisan legislation rammed through the upper chamber by Senate Republicans.

“We all want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process,” Schumer said. “That’s how it’s always been done, successfully, and we believe that, however, the Republicans are making it extremely difficult to do that.”

The meeting just off the Senate floor was meant to get congressional Democrats on board with a messaging plan over the next weeks and months ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government.

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It was also likely designed to prevent a repeat of the Democratic debacle in March, when Schumer broke with Jeffries and threatened to shutter the government before ultimately caving and providing Republicans the votes necessary to advance yet another government funding extension, known as a continuing resolution.

Republicans are quick to point out that when Schumer led the upper chamber, none of the House GOP’s spending bills made it to the floor — in Congress, the spending process begins in the lower chamber.

Since taking over earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has committed to returning to regular order, or passing each of the dozen spending bills to fund the government, and trying to get the appropriations process back to normal.

However, it’s a feat that hasn’t been successfully done in Washington since the late 1990s. 

“Frankly, I think a lot of us around here think [this] is long overdue,” Thune said.  

However, Democrats contend that their trust in Republicans is wearing thin after two major partisan bills, one being President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” and the other the president’s $9 billion clawback package, were pushed through the chamber without any Democratic input.

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Thune argued that Senate Democrats were using the rescissions package to shut down the appropriations process and effectively shut down the government.

In the Senate, most bills that come to the floor require at least 60 votes to smash through the filibuster, meaning that most legislation requires bipartisan support to some extent.

Earlier this year, the House GOP produced a partisan government funding extension that was a tough pill for Senate Democrats to swallow, but they still ultimately opted to vote for it. This time around, they’re demanding more involvement in the process.

Jeffries said that congressional Democrats would play ball if the process was “bipartisan and bicameral in nature” and put the onus of a partial government shutdown at the feet of congressional Republicans.

“House Republicans are, in fact, marching us toward a possible government shutdown that will hurt the American people,” he said.

However, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., threw the responsibility on Democrats over whether the government would shutter or stay open come the end of September.

“They’re gaming out how they can shut the government down,” Johnson told Bloomberg Government.