Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and nine other Democrats caved and voted with Senate Republicans to keep the government open this March. But if Congress approves President Donald Trump’s rescissions package this week, the pressure for Schumer to follow through on his shutdown threats will be even stronger this time around.
“It is absurd to expect Democrats to play along with funding the government if Republicans are just going to renege on a bipartisan agreement by concocting rescissions packages behind closed doors that can pass with only their votes, not the customary 60 votes required in the appropriation process,” Schumer said last week.
Schumer exalting the appropriation process is a bit rich since, as majority leader, he constantly thwarted appropriations bills in favor of year-end omnibus spending bills. But Schumer is touching on a real concern that Trump and Republicans in Congress are solidifying a pattern of behavior that would further weaken the Senate in favor of executive spending priorities.
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 has been rarely used, but it did alter Senate rules by statute, requiring just a simple majority vote from both chambers of Congress to approve spending cuts requested by the White House instead of the normal 60-vote threshold.
Why should Democrats bargain in good faith with Republicans over Appropriations bills if the White House and Senate Republicans can just turn around and unilaterally cut Democratic spending priorities with just 50 votes?
Additionally, sources tell the Washington Examiner that the White House would prefer another continuing resolution before the Sept. 30 funding deadline, not a budget deal negotiated with Democrats. The White House feels Senate Republicans will have to concede too much in new spending to win the Democratic votes needed to get to 60. The preference is to do a party-line continuing resolution at current spending levels and then dare Democrats to vote against it.
If the rescissions goes through, and the Appropriations process falls apart, what real incentive will Democrats have to vote for another CR? Especially if even with that CR, Republicans can again turn around and pass yet another rescissions package?
Complicating all of this is the fact that Republicans feel they have the upper hand and Schumer will just cave again.
“I don’t take it serious,” Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), a centrist Republican with a bipartisan streak, told the Washington Examiner. “Everybody knows a ‘Schumer shutdown’ is too easy to brand, and I can’t imagine that he wants that brand. He’d be walking right into it.”
This is a widespread belief in the Republican caucus, one that makes Republicans even less willing to make concessions to Democrats in the Appropriations process.
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Schumer already took a lot of heat for voting with Republicans in March. The Democratic Party base wants to see their leaders fight. Most Republicans presume Democrats would be hurt more by a government shutdown than Republicans.
After what happened this spring, Schumer might just be willing to test that hypothesis.