Let us begin by acknowledging the difficulty of Chuck Schumer’s position: Were he to line Democrats up against the GOP funding plan, it could give Republicans an opportunity to blame his party for a government shutdown—and Donald Trump and Elon Musk an opportunity, as the minority leader suggested, to take even more control. But by throwing his support behind the proposal, and allowing his members to do the same, he’d be effectively collaborating with a regime that has already amassed too much power and used it to dismantle much of the very government he’s seeking to keep open. He was “totally screwed,” as a White House staffer gloated to Politico’s Rachel Bade Thursday.
But in a world of bad options, Schumer may have chosen the worse route—an acquiescence that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the House Democrats who opposed the bill en masse consider a “betrayal,” and that could, in the estimation of Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, make Trump’s job that much easier. “It makes big changes to law, and they’re all changes designed to make it easier for Trump to implement that plan to destroy our country,” Murphy said Thursday. The rogue president has already been doing pretty much whatever he wants through executive and extragovernmental action; now, his Capitol Hill surrogates will be able to forge ahead without tangible pushback from the opposition party.
“This turns the federal government into a slush fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN Thursday, after Schumer announced he would vote yes on the Republican funding plan. “It is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free.”
The bill in question is indeed utter garbage, as even Schumer acknowledged in a floor speech and New York Times op-ed Thursday explaining his rationale: “It is deeply partisan,” Schumer noted, understating how extreme the legislation is. “It doesn’t address the country’s needs.” But, the minority leader reasoned, to allow the lights to go out Friday would be to further empower Trump and Musk, who may be disinclined to turn them back on—eager, as they are, to hide their corruption in the shadows. “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,” Schumer said. “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.”
Of course, that’s what’s already been going on. But right now, Schumer argued, Trump “owns the chaos in the government”—a shutdown would be “the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda.” It would seem, in voting yes on the funding bill, that some of that ownership would transfer over to Schumer and the Democrats. But it sounds as though the minority leader may have read another recent Times op-ed—the one James Carville wrote arguing that instead of fighting back, Democrats should “do nothing at all” and “let the Republicans crumble.”
Where Republicans like Mitch McConnell found ways to obstruct Democratic majorities in the past, Schumer and Democratic leadership in the Senate can’t seem to find the willingness or ability to play hardball. “McConnell abused the filibuster to make America worse,” as Democratic Representative Sean Casten quipped Thursday. “Schumer is refusing to use the filibuster to…accomplish what, exactly?”
Schumer said in his floor speech that he will “fight what Donald Trump is doing,” which is how “Democrats will win.” But how? With better messaging? With some half-assed protests outside the Treasury Department? With some “bingo signs?”
The party, under its current leadership, always seems to be gearing up for some future fight, while shrinking away from the one in front of them now.
Schumer is right: A “shutdown is not a political game,” as he said on the floor, and would “mean real pain for American families.” But at what point does the cost of what’s already happening exceed that of this fight? At what point does mitigation—Schumer’s stated effort to “minimize the harms to the American people”—become appeasement? “It is one thing for those who aspire to dictatorship to take power,” as Senator Adam Schiff said Thursday. “It is another to knowingly give it to him.”
Democrats across the spectrum—from progressive members like AOC to swing state moderates like Senator Mark Kelly, who said after Schumer’s remarks that he’ll still vote no on the bill—increasingly seem to be recognizing the nature of the political moment we’re in. It’s time their leaders did, too.
