Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) brushed off questions surrounding his leadership and defended his decision to vote to advance the six-month GOP-crafted continuing resolution (CR) that will fund the government through the end of September, saying during an interview that he and his caucus are on the same page.
Schumer was asked on CNN by Jake Tapper if the long-time lawmaker was “worried” about his leadership position after getting fierce pushback from House Democrats and some senators in his conference about his decision to vote to move forward a funding bill that he said previously was “bad.”
“I think I had the overwhelming support in my caucus, and so many of the members thanked me and said, ‘You did what you thought was courageous, and we respect it.’ I think my caucus and I are in sync, and everyone knew what I was doing and respected it,” Schumer said during his Friday appearance on CNN.
Schumer told Senate Democrats during a lunch meeting Thursday and later in the day affirmed that he would vote to advance the GOP-led CR in order to avoid a shutdown. On Wednesday, he said the House bill did not have enough votes to pass.
“I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.
The New York senator emphasized, again, on Friday that the House funding resolution is a “bad bill,” but also argued that it would be “far worse to give [President] Donald Trump the keys to the city and the country,” if the CR fails.
“We all know that [Elon] Musk and DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] and Trump want to decimate the federal government and letting them shut down the government, allowing them to shut down the government, they would have done it within two, three weeks,” Schumer said on Friday before the final vote on the resolution.
Schumer, along with nine other Democrats, voted with Republicans to help advance the CR to the final vote. The bill advanced with a 62-38 vote on Friday.
Shortly after, the Senate passed the House-led bill to avert a government shutdown with a 54-46 vote. Only two Democrats, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with the party, voted for the measure. On the Republican side, only Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against the CR.
Only one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), who represents a battleground district, voted for the CR in the lower chamber. Tapper asked Schumer what message he wants to give to those toss-up district House Democrats as well as senators in purple states that opted against backing the funding bill.
“I respect what the House members did. I’m glad all of them voted against it, but as I said, it is much different in the Senate, where if you would have voted against the bill, and the bill would have gone down, the whole government would have shut down from one end to the other, creating dramatic and huge hardship for tens of millions of Americans,” Schumer said.
