Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said 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 shut down, congressional Republicans “would weaponize their majorities to cherry pick which parts of the government to reopen in a protracted shutdown.”
