Senate Republicans are looking to heap pressure on Democrats amid their fight over government funding — and they believe Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) talkative nature is giving them a key advantage.
While the party remains committed to moving ahead on a “clean” stopgap spending bill, four Senate GOP sources told The Hill they openly want the Democratic leader to continue beating the drums about a potential shutdown, believing that his doing so gives Republicans the upper hand and further pushes him into a corner as funding questions fester.
“I think he’s disconnected from the reality of what’s happening on the ground in a lot of places,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “People don’t want dysfunction. They don’t want a government shutdown. They don’t want people taking a stand on stuff that doesn’t impact them or they don’t understand.”
“Yeah — it’s good for him to talk,” she added.
A Senate GOP aide was more blunt.
“Let Schumer be Schumer,” they said.
Six months after he stunned Democrats and progressives by voting for the GOP’s yearlong spending stopgap, the Democratic leader has shown few signs of backing down from his party’s demands as less than two weeks stand between lawmakers and the first shutdown in nearly seven years.
Headlining those demands is action to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has maintained will not be part of the funding patch and were not included in the stopgap bill the House advanced on Wednesday.
Schumer is facing numerous political considerations of his own. Questions first popped up in March about his standing atop the Democratic caucus after he broke with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to back the “clean” continuing resolution (CR).
Those considerations have also extended to his backyard as the New York mayoral race has become the preeminent off-year contest on the map and questions continue to percolate about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) potentially challenging him in 2028.
With time winding down and tensions only heightening, Republicans are more than willing to let Schumer’s words carry the day — both his recent floor speeches and press conferences, and his past comments hammering Republicans for not supporting “clean” CRs and arguing that it is irresponsible not to keep the government’s lights on.
“That’s kind of one of our strategies,” Thune admitted.
“I just think right now, the Dems are in a really tough spot,” he continued. “They’re under a ton of pressure from their far-left base to just obstruct everything, and at some point that becomes a hard position to sustain, especially when it comes to keeping the government open.”
Republicans are also likening Schumer’s push to put the ACA subsidies on the table to the conservative effort 12 years ago to defund the ACA, also known as ObamaCare, and insist that much like that effort, this one is doomed.
“They’re trying to hijack a government funding resolution, which is clean and bipartisan, to add a whole bunch of partisan stuff to it,” Thune added, going so far as to note on the floor that Democrats passed a “clean” CR 13 times while in the majority in recent years. “I don’t think that’s a very sustainable position when we’re just trying to get the appropriations process working again in a way to fund the government the way we should be funding it.”
The New York Democrat insists that a “clean” bill won’t cut it this time, saying that the situation is “much different now” and citing the rising unpopularity of the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” unity among Democrats and actions by the Trump administration on rescissions.
Democrats took additional steps that miffed Republicans in recent days, including releasing a CR of their own that includes what the GOP views as “partisan” priorities.
Schumer and Jeffries’s calls for a meeting with top brass also led them to send letters in the mail to GOP leaders, a move that Thune slammed in response.
“Republicans have been calling their bill a ‘clean’ CR. But ‘clean’ is the wrong word. It’s a partisan bill. It had no input from Democrats. And most importantly, because it had no input from Democrats, it’s a status quo bill. And Americans don’t want the status quo,” Schumer said Wednesday in his floor remarks.
“Donald Trump has told Republicans ‘don’t even bother.’ He said ‘don’t even bother’ negotiating with Democrats. And they have, unfortunately, dutifully obeyed,” Schumer continued. “Democrats don’t want a shutdown. But Republicans cannot shut Democrats out of the process and pretend like the last nine months have been business as usual.”
If the House is able to pass the CR on Friday, Thune is expected to kick off consideration of it shortly after. Given the need for consent from Democrats to proceed, the first vote could happen late next week or Mon., Sept. 29.
That’s music to Republicans’ ears, as they hope Schumer keeps up that type of rhetoric as he attempts this political high-wire act.
“He is in the most precarious political position of everybody, and I’m not sure that he can survive it,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “I do so see him as vulnerable and I think he sees himself as vulnerable, and I think it’s both paralyzing to him and ineffective in communicating.”
“He’s just a mess,” Cramer continued. “I think he’s got a politically impossible situation.”
