The Senate voted on Friday afternoon to move forward with a Republican short-term funding bill and avoid a federal government shutdown. Ten Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted in favor of cloture, limiting further debate and advancing the bill to final passage. The funding bill then passed in a 54-46 vote, with two Democrats joining all but one Republican senator in support.
It was the culmination of a wild week that brought to a head a divide among congressional Democrats over how best to counter President Donald Trump’s agenda. Moreover, it has left Schumer a far cry from his past as once one of the party’s more effective messengers. Now, the caucus he leads, thanks to his own missteps, appears too disjointed and out of sync to have a coherent message.
Now, the caucus he leads, thanks to his own missteps, appears too disjointed and out of sync to have a coherent message.
For months now, Schumer has advocated for a posture of letting Republicans trip over themselves and reaping the rewards during the midterms. “Trump will screw up,” he told Semafor in early February, urging Democrats to remain patient. Even as it became clear that negotiations over the looming government funding deadline were faltering, Senate Democrats have been more focused on the fight over the GOP’s funding bill for the next fiscal year.
History was on their side on that front, especially with the extremely narrow GOP majority in the House. The odds of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., managing to corral his fractious caucus without support from Democrats to get a funding bill over the line seemed slim. But then the unthinkable happened: the House GOP banded together without any of its usual drama.
The continuing resolution the House approved on Tuesday slashes funding for nondefense spending over the next six months but does so stealthily enough that swing-district Republicans could support it. More significantly, the normally anti-CR House Freedom Caucus jumped on board after Trump and Vice President JD Vance promised that the White House would simply cut whatever spending the resolution authorized that they didn’t like. That alone should have been enough to make clear to congressional Democrats that the language they were demanding to curtail Trump’s illegal impoundment should be required for any support in passing the bill.
House Democrats were a bit all over the place in their reasoning for opposing the bill, citing the reduced short-term funding, the longer-term risk to Social Security and other entitlements, and calling it as a free pass to let the Department of Government Efficiency continue its illegal downsizing of the government. But despite differing motives, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., made sure his caucus agreed on the results. All but one House Democrat voted against the bill. Given lawmakers’ — and especially Democrats’ — temptation to avoid blame for a shutdown, this was a major feat for Jeffries and his team.
But even as House Democrats stuck together, it quickly became clear how unprepared Senate Democrats were for this moment. According to NBC News, “Schumer didn’t initiate a full caucus conversation about how to handle the House measure until Democrats met for lunch on Tuesday,” after the House bill had already passed. Two days of closed-door discussions did not lead to consensus among members on how to avoid a shutdown without appearing to capitulate to Trump.
The resulting messaging from Senate Democrats was a mess. On Wednesday afternoon, Schumer announced that there weren’t Democratic votes for the GOP bill and that the caucus was unified on a 30-day funding bill to allow for more negotiations. But getting that alternative to the floor would have required offering it as an amendment, which would have required at least eight Democrats to vote for cloture anyway. It would only be then that Democrats could offer up their plan as amendment — which was guaranteed to fail, given that Republicans control 53 seats. (It and two other amendments, as predicted, failed to pass on Friday afternoon.)
The strategy seemed like an attempt to use the arcane procedures of the Senate to hoodwink Democratic voters into thinking the caucus had done everything in its power to stop the resolution. That feeling was justified the next day when Schumer turned around to say that he would vote in favor of advancing the bill rather than allowing a shutdown. “I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said in a floor speech. “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”
Moderate and progressive Democrats alike have either denounced or disregarded Schumer’s argument. It’s not that Schumer’s reasoning was entirely misguided. As one senator reportedly yelled at their colleagues this week, the Trump administration might use a shutdown to declare a national emergency. It could also be used to justify Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency firing “nonessential” personnel. And shutdowns are generally bad politically for the party that’s seen as at fault. But for a party that has struggled to figure out where to draw the line against Trump, it came across as a prime example of giving up without a fight. To say that House Democrats were angry at Schumer’s capitulation is an understatement. Their fury was compounded because, according to NBC News, Jeffries’ team had let Schumer know about their plan to unify against the bill and force the GOP back to the table — a plan that could only work if Senate Democrats held strong as well. “I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal, and this is not just progressive Democrats — this is across the board, the entire party,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters on Thursday night. This sort of dispute is exceedingly rare for congressional Democrats. What makes this divide even more unusual is that it isn’t based on ideology. Moderate and progressive Democrats alike have either denounced or disregarded Schumer’s argument. Nor can the split be primarily viewed as a battle between the old guard and upstarts, as The New York Times framed the anger at Schumer. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was Schumer’s partner in countering the first Trump administration, lent her voice to the chorus denouncing his decision. And when asked about the Senate leadership’s performance this week, Jeffries responded with a distinct lack of support for Schumer: “Next question.” There’s a distinct irony here given how much of Schumer’s rise was fueled by his reputation as being a media whiz. After his predecessor, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, announced his retirement in 2015, Schumer was immediately tapped to take the reins. As Politico wrote at the time: “After two cycles running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and after he’s taken the reins as the messaging guru, Schumer is viewed by many of his colleagues as being one of his party’s savviest political tacticians.” Now that reputation seems ill-deserved given the heartache and lack of clarity along the way from him. In this case, Schumer got what he wanted and managed to bring enough of his members with him to avoid a shutdown. But in the process, he’s alienated the House and accelerated the growing conversation about the need for sitting senators to face primary challengers. Whether he leads the Senate Democratic caucus after the midterms is now in doubt. And in refusing to use every tool in his power to stop Trump’s violation of the Constitution, Schumer has left an already demoralized Democratic base wondering when, if ever, the party’s leaders are going to act like their campaign trail warnings about the threat Trump poses to the country will be reflected in their actions.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
