Senate Democrats Are Threatening To Fight Back With A Government Shutdown

Republicans are getting nervous after Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told them to stop being Trump's rubber stamp, or he implied that Democrats will shut the government down.

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After passing the bill to throw 17 million Americans off their healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans thought they were in the clear, but an implied threat by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a letter sent Republicans into a tizzy.

Schumer wrote in part:

As we enter the July work period, Republicans will soon confront the decision as to whether they continue down this dangerous partisan path: Will they work across the aisle with Democrats to responsibly fund the government or will they bend to the pressure from President Trump and the hard-right to once again go it alone? How they answer this question has grave implications for the Congress, the legislative branch’s role, and, more importantly, for our country.

At the behest of Donald Trump, Senate Republican leadership is set to bring to the floor this work period a toxic proposal to hollow-out bipartisan investments in public broadcasting and critical foreign aid programs. Passed by the House earlier this summer, this so-called rescission package is eligible for fast-track consideration in the Senate and can pass with a simple majority vote.

Republicans’ passage of this purely partisan proposal would be an affront to the bipartisan appropriations process. That’s why a number of Senate Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes.