Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate Minority leader, led 9 other Democrats to cross the aisle to help a Trump-endorsed funding bill pass the Senate. The bill passed 54-46 and was later signed by President Trump. It increases defense spending by $6 billion while cutting non-defense spending by $13 billion.
The decision by Schumer to avoid the government shutdown over opposing Trump has led Democrats to call for his removal as minority leader. The key takeaway from the passage was an observation by some Democrats that the Republicans just followed their playbook. They froze the opposition out of negotiations and whipped the party to barely pass the bill, putting extreme pressure on the Senate to pass it lest they be the ones to be blames for the government being shut down.
The fact that another continuing resolution, rather than a fiscal year budget, once again kept the government, has some republicans questioning the leadership of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-AR).
‘Full of despair’: Senate Dems look to regroup after losing shutdown fight– www.politico.com
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Excerpt:
Senate Democrats are bracing for a painful post-mortem as they try to avoid a September rerun of their latest government funding defeat.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and nine of his members helped get a House GOP-authored government funding bill to the finish line, saying a vote to advance legislation they loathed was the least bad option. The alternative, they argued, was allowing a shutdown that could empower President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to accelerate their slashing of the federal bureaucracy.
This was the first time since the start of Trump’s second administration that the party had real leverage to fight the president, as Republicans needed Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats could have refused to put up those votes to avert a shutdown, but Schumer folded instead. This gambit is now raising internal questions about how Democrats will handle the next shutdown deadline at the end of September — and how they can avoid the same result.
Schumer’s strategy exposed major fissures within the party, marking for many of his members a disappointing retreat. It’s also raised questions among some Democrats about whether it’s time for the New Yorker to step aside — though no senators have publicly embraced those calls.
“We should do a retrospective,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Asked whether his party lost some of its clout by acquiescing to the GOP’s funding bill, Gallego said: “That was my concern.”
