The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is on its way to being over, hopefully. The Senate on Monday night passed a Jan. 30 stopgap funding bill to reopen the government, combined with a three-bill minibus. Eight Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans on the hugely controversial measure.
The House is up next. House members will return Wednesday, after having been gone a mind-blowing 53 days, to vote on the legislation.
The package is expected to pass in the chamber, but it will take some heavy lifting by Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leaders to get it there. Much more on this below.
Schumer-centric. As senators struggled to find a way out of the devastating shutdown, missing from the final round of negotiations was one of the most important players: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Instead, it was retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — among the most vocal Democratic supporters of the expiring Obamacare subsidies — who sat face-to-face with Senate Majority Leader John Thune to button up a key piece of the final deal: A commitment to vote on extending the subsidies.
It was extraordinary for Schumer not to be involved. Yet Thune had declared repeatedly that the path out of the shutdown wouldn’t be through Schumer, but rather rank-and-file Democrats. He turned out to be right.
According to Shaheen, Schumer was kept apprised of the talks with Thune and never tried to dissuade her from engaging with Republicans. Shaheen didn’t have anything negative to say about Schumer, although when pressed, she wouldn’t say whether Schumer backed the Democratic moderates’ engagement with Thune.
“There were a lot of conversations between those of us who were working together and our Republican colleagues, and it seemed like it was important to talk directly,” Shaheen said.
In the end, Schumer voted against the bipartisan deal to end the shutdown, joining with the majority of his caucus in lashing out at President Donald Trump and Republicans.
But it’s Schumer who’s taking most of the heat from progressives. His response was to tout the perceived political victory Democrats scored.
“The American people have now awoken to Trump’s health care crisis,” Schumer said on the floor before the final vote.
More Schumer:
“Democrats demanded that we find a way to fix this crisis and quickly, but Republicans have refused to move an inch. So I cannot support the Republican bill that’s on the floor because it fails to do anything of substance to fix America’s health care crisis.”
The backlash. Despite the uproar from the left, Schumer’s job is safe.
Schumer was going to get slammed here no matter what the outcome was, something we warned you about. Schumer took a big risk by advocating for a shutdown. He and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gambled that they could pull Trump into the fight to counter Thune and Johnson. When Trump didn’t bite, the standoff became a question of who would blink first.
In some ways, Democrats’ big electoral wins a week ago made the situation even tougher for Schumer. Trump complained the shutdown was “worse for us than them.” Schumer wavered, allowing the fight to drag into the weekend.
Progressive groups and the Democratic base were convinced that if Schumer just stayed the course, Republicans would fold — despite the growing national problems stemming from the shutdown. This was a major misread.
Yet Schumer also wouldn’t greenlight a deal to end the impasse. Chastened from the March CR debacle, Schumer embraced the shutdown and continuously rejected any deals with Republicans.
However, Schumer’s own political future became tied to the shutdown, a treacherous spot to be in. Whether to continue supporting Schumer as leader has now become an issue in Senate Democratic primaries. Party insiders wonder whether his unpopularity on the left will impact fundraising, particularly at Senate Majority PAC, the leadership super PAC.
Schumer is known to religiously track polling data and let that guide his decision-making. Polls consistently showed Republicans getting the blame for the shutdown. That approach won Schumer some goodwill from inside his caucus.
But being the leader means you have to take arrows for everyone else. Just look at former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who consistently took heat from the right when he and a small group of Republicans would vote with Democrats to pass funding bills. Schumer did that in March, was relentlessly hammered for it, then shifted tactics.
Irate at the perceived fold, progressives blame Schumer for failing to rein in moderates like Shaheen. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — whom Schumer included in numerous meetings and strategy sessions — aren’t offering support. Others tiptoe around the question.
“You cannot defend this democracy effectively if you are not united as an opposition party, and we are repeatedly showing that we are not united,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “Sen. Schumer didn’t want this to be the outcome, and he pressed hard for it not to end. He didn’t succeed.”
There’s no real appetite to oust Schumer, though. Nor is there any interest from another Democrat to challenge him, according to interviews with more than a dozen Democratic senators.
“He had a tough job,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “Republicans forced an impossible, false choice between affordable health care and reopening the government.”
“The criticisms — I mean, I understand them,” added Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who broke with Schumer to back the funding deal. “But I think he led us in about the best way he could given the fact that we’re from different states and have different perspectives on this stuff.”
