Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that his party would oppose the spending bill that Republicans drafted and passed through the House, as the Friday midnight deadline looms for Congress to take action to avoid a government shutdown.
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input from Congressional Democrats,” Schumer wrote on X, echoing comments he made on the Senate floor.
“Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to pass the House CR,” he wrote. “Our caucus is unified on a clean 30-day CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that.”
The minority leader addressed the Senate floor after a lunch meeting with Democratic senators on Wednesday, as some were reportedly concerned that a shutdown would be more grim for their party despite them broadly being against the CR.
“There are not the votes right now to pass it,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters after the meeting, according to NBC News. “Democrats had nothing to do with this bill. And we want an opportunity to get an amendment vote or two. And so that’s what we are insisting on.”
“Quite frankly, both outcomes are bad,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., added, according to NBC. “Elections have consequences, but this is an extreme bill. If it passes, it will hurt a lot of ordinary people on the ground. If the government shuts down, that will hurt a lot of ordinary people on the ground, and so that is the dilemma in which we found ourselves.”
Warnock said the additional problem he has with the bill “is that I think it advances this project that we’re seeing come from the executive branch, this power grab that does not respect that the power of the purse is with the Congress.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., has not voiced whether he would support the bill in the upper chamber.
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