Report: Schumer Is Whipping Dem Senators to Pass Trump's Budget Bill

Schumer is reportedly looking for eight Democrats to vote for Cloture, which will guaranteed passage of the bill. Will he succeed?

Trump shakes hands with Schumer as he signs his Cabinet nominations into law at the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2017. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

According to DC writer Brad Johnson, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democratic Minority Leader, is whipping for the Trump continuing resolution which just passed the House.

Here’s Johnson on BlueSky:

As of this writing, a vote is not yet scheduled. It’s expected by midnight Friday.

Other Confirmation

House Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez today is whipping against the Cloture vote on BlueSky.

“They are starting to cave,” she says. Sounds like insider confirmation to me.

Triangulation

This is triangulation at its best: please everyone but the voters who keep you in power.

Cloture is the vote that counts. It takes 60 votes to close debate on the bill. If the bill fails Cloture, it dies. If it passes Cloture, it will pass on the floor by simple majority.

Then Schumer can say, “Sorry. We tried. We were always all against it. But a powerless minority party — what could we do? That Cloture vote? Just procedure. Don’t look at that.” If he succeeds at passing the bill, watch for language like this.

If Brad Johnson is right — and I’ve rarely known him wrong; he’s an excellent Hill-watcher — mainstream Democrats want to cave to the Trump-Musk move to take over congressional power of the purse.

My opinion: If that happens, it should not be tolerated. But that’s just me. the mass of Dem voters will decide. Will they cave to their leaders, like their leaders are caving to Trump? It’s interesting times.

Mainstream Reports

Even The Hill is suspicious. Note Schumer’s cagey response (emphasis mine):

Senate Democrats are leery of blocking a House Republican-drafted six-month government funding bill, fearing a government shutdown may backfire on them politically by giving Elon Musk and the Trump administration more leverage to force federal workers into retirement.

Democratic senators panned the House GOP proposal unveiled over the weekend, arguing it would erode Congress’s power of the purse and give President Trump and Musk a blank check to redirect government funding and eliminate long-standing programs.

But Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stopped short of declaring the House bill dead on arrival in the Senate, reflecting Democratic qualms about killing the measure if it manages to pass the lower chamber later this week.

What’s Wrong with the Continuing Resolution?

There’s no better explanation of what’s different about, and wrong, with the continuing resolution than this from The Prospect. The headline:

“Senate Democrats’ Choice: Block the Republican Spending Bill or Dissolve Congress”

The subhead continues the theme: “The House’s continuing resolution would effectively hand over spending decisions to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.” That’s not hyperbolic.

But most important, the bill grants an open invitation to Trump and Elon Musk to continue to ignore Congress and toss out disfavored spending. Vice President JD Vance, while selling the deal to House Republicans, stated outright that “Trump would continue cutting federal funding with his Department of Government Efficiency initiative and pursue impoundment—that is, holding back money appropriated by Congress.” This has been reiterated by others in the Trump administration.

In fact, the House Republican bill gives the president more leeway to move money around. It appropriates money for things that Musk has eliminated, meaning that money can operate as a floating slush fund for Trump’s priorities, as long as the courts don’t roll back the illegal impoundments.

Think about what this means. The Trump administration is saying that they will sign a bill appropriating specific funding, and then go about cutting funding anyway. If you’re a member of Congress, you’re being told that your work product doesn’t matter, that the constitutional power of the purse doesn’t matter, and that there’s no guarantee that anything you pass will actually reach the people you serve.

If you think Trump-Musk is engineering a coup, an attempt to revise the Constitution by force, here’s national Democrats’ chance: block or agree. What will they do? We should know by the end of the week.