Let's All Watch The Senate Vote On Funding The Government, Pelt Chuck Schumer Through The Teevee
HOO FUCKING BOY CHUCK.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) announced yesterday that he’ll vote today to pass the Republicans’ awful spending bill, arguing that bad though the continuing resolution is, allowing a government shutdown would be far worse.
That has not convinced Democrats who are very, very angry at seeing him fold. Around 100 people showed up at Schumer’s house this morning to advise him — loudly! — that he ought to reconsider:
We like the big cardboard “eyeball” signs, a reminder that everybody is watching Senate Democrats to see how they vote today, and perhaps also that it’s always a good time to check out The Residents.
We aren’t convinced either, especially because even the largest federal workers’ union argued against voting for the CR, because Donald Trump and proxy President Elon Musk are already shutting down government agencies with no pushback from his party. And to get far-right Republicans in the Freedom Caucus on board, Trump let them know he has no intention of being constrained by whatever budget the GOP passes. He will simply continue illegally and unconstitutionally embargoing funds appropriated by Congress if he chooses. And that’s what he’ll choose.
As we noted yesterday, a shutdown might at least offer Democrats a chance to force concessions that might rein Trump in. If the CR passes, Dems will lose any leverage to negotiate until the CR runs out at the end of the fiscal year, in September. (Before then, there’s also the coming fight over extending the debt ceiling, but Democrats are even less willing to play chicken with the world economy than they are to allow a government shutdown.)
If the CR passes, that also means Republicans in Congress, having abandoned their power of the purse, can then move on to their top goal, passing their “one big bill” through the reconciliation process. That’s the one that would hand corporations and billionaires $4.5 trillion in tax cuts while slashing social programs, basic government services, and almost certainly Medicaid and possibly Medicare to offset the costs.
House Democrats, who voted almost-unanimously against the bill on Tuesday, were plenty pissed off, too. Many believe that since they were willing to stick their necks out to oppose the bill and risk a shutdown — including vulnerable members in red-leaning districts — Senate Democrats should be willing to demand an end to Trump’s unconstitutional crime spree, or let Republicans, who are already wildly unpopular, face the consequences of a shutdown. Per Axios:
A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.
Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.
And yes, several are supporting a 2026 primary challenge to Schumer, urging Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run against him. Axios reports that one House Democrat “even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to ‘write a check tonight’ supporting Ocasio-Cortez,” according to an anonymous “senior House Democrat.”
So yes, people are PISSED, and they got even angrier when earlier this week a number of Senate Democrats seemed willing to agree to vote for cloture in exchange for the chance to bring up amendments for a vote, such as a Democratic “clean CR” that would fund the government for another month, allowing more time for negotiations. But that just made constituents angrier, so the Kabuki Option is no longer on the table.
As David Dayen points out, voters’ rage at the very idea of what he calls “pulling a Lieberman” nipped that in the bud, and a whole bunch of Senate Dems
checked the rules and found out they could actually just vote no. Of the key nine senators I identified a couple of days ago who might be willing to vote to advance the House CR, five have publicly stated their opposition. Importantly, Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), and Mark Warner (D-VA) have all stated that they are nos on cloture.
Now, we don’t know how that will hold up in the vote that’s expected later today, because some spines may grow weak now that Schumer said he’ll be voting for cloture. Even if those five stick to their guns, there may be enough yeses on cloture among Dems who haven’t taken a position. But not definitely.
We’ll know soon enough, since the vote will get underway fairly soon, at last.
Now, we should point out one point that might (might!) serve as an argument against a shutdown: As Marcy Wheeler cogently argues, building on a point made by Schumer in his speech yesterday, the most successful moves against Trump’s ongoing attempts at democracide have been in the courts, where several of his most extreme moves have been blocked.
Wheeler notes that, even though the judiciary isn’t subject to being defunded or fired by the executive branch, the court buildings and staff that keep them operating are under the executive branch: The General Services Agency is in charge of the buildings and support staff, and security is provided by US Marshals, under the Justice Department. In a shutdown, Trump would be free to declare the lot of them “unessential,” putting the gains against his authoritarian agenda in peril by paralyzing the court system.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime.
It’s worth considering, although it still isn’t clear to us that Trump and his wrecking crew wouldn’t pursue much of that anyway. But a shutdown might provide cover for them to get away with it more easily.
If the CR passes, we won’t know for sure whether a shutdown would have actually been worse than the de facto government shutdowns that Trump will be free to pursue under the Republican bill. It already hands him more power over spending than normal budget bills do, and if he wants to go farther than that, he’s made clear he thinks he can ignore Congress anyway.
UPDATE: Well then. Cloture passed, 62-38, and then the CR itself passed 54-46, with only two Democrats (King of Maine and Shaheen of New Hampshire) joining 52 Republicans (Rand Paul voted no).
Perhaps in the future, scientists and historians will find a way to throw some Quantum at a TV and look in on alternative realities, so they can see what happened in the America where the government did shut down. They’ll probably have to be from Europe or China, though.
[AP / NBC News / Axios / Emptywheel / TPM / American Prospect]
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Okeydokey, the Senate is finally getting to the actual funding bill, not sure whether there'll be debate or remarks before they vote, but I'm unpinning the previous "whoops not yet" note about the livestream.
Correction and update: the vote on the livestream now (just before 2:00 EDT) is NOT on cloture for the funding bill, it's on Trump's nominee for deputy defense secretary. We couldn't tell, since the TV screen doesn't transmit the smell of alcohol.
EDIT: And now (2:30 EDT) it's some dang fentanyl bill. Come on guys, you're just messing with us now.