House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and House Democratic leadership are not changing their stance on the GOP-led stopgap funding bill, even after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signaled his willingness to support it.
The continuing resolution, which is expected to get a vote in the Senate on Friday, will need at least eight Democratic votes to clear a procedural hurdle. Until Schumer announced he would advance the bill, how it would pass was unclear. The Democratic leader argued in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday that the continuing resolution was bad but that a government shutdown would be worse.
Despite Schumer’s new stance on the stopgap, House Democrats maintain their opposition to the measure and insist on a 30-day continuing resolution instead.
“Instead of working with Democrats in a bipartisan way to prevent a government shutdown, House Republicans left town in order to jam their extreme partisan legislation down the throats of the American people. The far-right Republican funding bill will unleash havoc on everyday Americans, giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk even more power to continue dismantling the federal government,” Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said in a joint statement.
“House Democrats are ready to vote for a four-week continuing resolution that keeps the government open and returns all parties to the negotiating table. That is the best way forward,” the joint statement continued, adding that they “remain strongly opposed to the partisan spending bill under consideration in the Senate.”
Schumer’s decision to support pushing the continuing resolution forward has received backlash from firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who said “there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal” among House Democrats, according to CNN. The outlet also reported that multiple Democrats in the Congressional Progressive Caucus encouraged Ocasio-Cortez to run against Schumer in a Senate primary.
SCHUMER CAVES ON SHUTDOWN BATTLE WITH GOP, CLEARING WAY FOR FUNDING BILL PASSAGE
While House Democrats have largely been united in their opposition to the Republican-led stopgap bill, one House Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), supported the measure. He argued in a statement after the vote that his party was creating “unnecessary fear” with some of the false claims it made about the bill.
If a continuing resolution is not approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Donald Trump by the end of Friday, the government will enter a shutdown.