March 14, 2025
It appears Senate Minority Leader Schumer has determined the path of least resistance for Senate Dems is to support the House’s 7-month Continuing Budget Resolution, and in doing so keep the federal government open and move the process by which discretionary spending is appropriated forward.
Remember: The Continuing Budget Reso negotiations/process is about discretionary spending and does not involve cuts to entitlement programs. The Budget Reconciliation process is where decisions around savings and cuts in the future are negotiated and where the House has instructed its Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880B in savings in the Medicaid Program.
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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, (Senator) 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.
“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.
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.
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The Democratic base wants a fight. Chuck Schumer won’t give it to them.
The Senate minority leader on Thursday backed away from the shutdown confrontation that many liberal voters and activist leaders had been pushing for — arguing that closing the government would only empower President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk in their bureaucracy-slashing campaign.
That decision sent shockwaves through the left and had many in their ranks seething at a top party leader who had sought to win them over in recent years.
Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of the liberal grassroots organization Indivisible, quickly dubbed it the “Schumer surrender.”
“I guess we’ll find out to what extent Schumer is leading the party into irrelevance,” he said in an interview, adding that his decision “tells me maybe he’s lost a step.”
The news that the top Senate Democrat would be backing down dejected scores of House members who were gathered at a resort about 25 miles outside of Washington for the Democratic Caucus’ annual policy retreat.
They had stuck together behind House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had wrangled all but one of his members to oppose Republicans’ seven-month funding patch earlier in the week.
“Extremely disappointed,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said after he heard the news. “It gives them the ability, Elon Musk the ability, to go through and continue to do the shit he’s doing.”
And further outside Washington, longtime party activists and high-dollar donors fumed about Schumer: “He sucks,” one state party chair who was granted anonymity to respond candidly, adding that the cave constituted “political malpractice.
Schumer delivered a 10-minute speech on the Senate floor defending his decision, later holding a question-and-answer session with Capitol Hill reporters and publishing a New York Times op-ed.
His points were two-fold: First, a shutdown would play into Trump and Musk’s hands, he argued, allowing them to continue with their slash-and-burn campaign overdrive. His second argument was more political — and in keeping with his long history as a leading strategist counseling his party to pay heed to the concerns of America’s middle class above all else.
“For Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift,” Schumer said. “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 added. “In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen, which to keep closed, instead of debating the damage Donald Trump’s agenda is causing the American people.”
Some Democrats offered some sympathy, given the dilemma he and other senators faced. The GOP-written stopgap cuts some $12 billion in domestic funding while adding money for migrant deportations and some other programs Democrats oppose. It also contains no language that would stop the Trump administration from continuing to hold back congressionally approved spending.
But Schumer argued there was no telling what Trump and Musk would do in a shutdown, where the White House would “have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel non-essential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired,” he said.
“I don’t think he had a choice,” Democratic National Committee member Joseph Paulino Jr. said, adding that Democrats “don’t have any cohesive plan. They don’t have a strategy. They don’t have any clear direction where they want their … opposition to go.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, called it a “challenging” choice for Schumer even as she called a temporary shutdown “a better option than passing a bad bill.” She predicted blowback from grassroots activists but demurred on how lasting it might be.
“There will be strong reactions,” she said. “But the exact consequences, I think it’s too soon to know.”
Prior to Schumer’s remarks, progressive groups were encouraged by the succession of Senate Democrats who had publicly announced opposition to the GOP funding measure. More than a dozen did so Thursday, many of them echoing the language used by activists.
“I don’t want a shutdown but I can’t vote for this overreach of power, giving Trump and Musk unchecked power to line their pockets,” said Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey in an online post.
Joel Payne, the chief communications director at MoveOn, called the moment “pretty disappointing,” adding that it crystallized for many in Democratic activists that Schumer and other Democratic leaders may not be equipped for fighting a more brazen, second-term Trump.
“I think it does say a little something about whether or not these folks truly understand the fight that we’re in right now,” Payne said. “And I think that’s a question that a lot of folks are asking.”
The irony is that Schumer had spent much of the past five years patching up his relationship with the Democratic Party’s left flank. Once known as a friend of Wall Street interests and an ally of moderates, he faced similar criticism as minority leader during the first Trump term, then retooled his reputation after becoming Senate majority leader in 2021 — embracing the expansive pandemic-era spending plans of President Joe Biden and winning converts among liberals.
Now Schumer is facing sharp backlash from some of Biden’s top advisers. His former top domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, told Schumer to “please grow a spine. And quickly.” Neera Tanden, who held the same top policy job, expressed exasperation after Schumer told reporters Trump would be more unpopular — and Democrats would be better positioned to fight — in the fall.
“HE’S UNPOPULAR NOW,” she responded on X. “LORD!”
Schumer did not take any incoming fire from his fellow Democratic leader and Brooklyn native, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Speaking to his members at the retreat, Jeffries told them that their votes were “something they can be proud of now and tomorrow and years from now” but did not criticize Schumer directly, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private remarks.
“We stood up against Donald Trump. We stood up against Elon Musk. We stood up against the extreme MAGA Republicans,” Jeffries said. “We can defend that vote because we stood on the side of the American people.”
A leader of the Democratic left in the House was not as oblique. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — often mentioned as a potential primary rival for Schumer — said on CNN Thursday that Schumer had made a “tremendous mistake.”
“To me, it is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand [one of] the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free,” she said.
Asked Thursday to respond in advance to possible calls for new Democratic leadership in the Senate, Schumer said he made a “tough choice … based on what I thought were the merits.” (None of his Senate colleagues, notably, joined in the firestorm of criticism.)
“You have to make these decisions based on what is best for not only your party but your country, and I firmly believe and always have that I’ve made the right decision,” he continued. “I believe that my members understand that … conclusion and respect it.”
Mia McCarthy and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
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* Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said yesterday that she plans to mobilize her massive base of followers to oppose what she described as an “acquiesce” by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to accept the House GOP funding bill, CNN reports.
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* After decisive rejection by lawmakers, the head of the state Office of Mental Health yesterday defended Hochul’s budget proposal to ease the criteria for involuntary commitment, which would increase New Yorkers hospitalized with a mental illness, State of Politics reports.
Mental health commissioner defends Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment”Forty-three other states have this in their statute because over time, they found it to be important to have this to help this small group of individuals that you really want to make sure have the chance to live a healthy life,” Sullivan exclusively told Spectrum News 1.
Lawmakers proposed more for mental health crisis response teams and a 7.8% cost of living increase for mental health and human services workers — up from the governor’s slated 2.1% hike.
The Senate and Assembly also proposed $22 million to implement Daniel’s law pilot programs statewide, which would require a crisis team respond to emergency calls involving a mental health issue or substance abuse.
“We also need to make sure that we are removing barriers to getting that mental health care and those mental health services, and a huge piece of that is who shows up when one of those mental health crisis calls comes in,” Senate Mental Health Committee chair Samra Brouk said.
Brouk said she knows of cases in the state where people received better mental health services after being involuntarily committed — and it shouldn’t be that way.
Sullivan argued the change would not criminalize homelessness and involuntary commitment is used as a last resort. Lawmakers kept proposals in Hochul’s budget to spend $10 million to open up to seven new clubhouses and four for youth to help people with serious mental health conditions, and $4 million to create a hospital-based “peer bridger” program and expand Intensive and Sustained Engagement, or INSET, teams.