Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) addressed the upper chamber and publicly declared his intention to vote for the Republican-sponsored continuing resolution (CR).
If a spending bill or CR is not passed, the government will shut down at midnight on Friday, March 14.
Republicans in the House (almost entirely along party lines) passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through September, but Democrats in the upper chamber couldn't get the Senate version to the 60-vote necessary threshold to send the bill President Donald Trump's (R) desk.
Leader Schumer declared that letting the government shut down would grant more power to President Donald Trump (R) as well as Elon Musk and their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative.
JUST IN: Senator Chuck Schumer caves by coming out in support of the GOP CR bill, lashes out against "Radical MAGAs."
"Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown."
"This, in my view, is no choice at all. While the… pic.twitter.com/bLmY85nKq1
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 13, 2025
"Sycophants and MAGA radicals want to burn everything to the ground," began Sen. Schumer. "Look no further than what DOGE is doing now, Republicans' nihilism has brought us to the brink of disaster ... I have said many times there are no winners in a government shutdown, but there are certainly victims; the most vulnerable Americans who rely on federal programs to feed their families, to access medical care and to stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer and suffer greatly."
Schumer then reminded the American public that Democrats have offered a one-month stopgap to provide more time to avoid both a government shutdown and another continuing resolution but the GOP "rejected this proposal" as days turned into hours.
"This week, Democrats offered a sensible way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal outright. Why did they reject it? Because Donald Trump doesn't want the appropriators to do their job," said Schumer. "He wants full control over government spending. He isn't the first president to wants this, to want this, but he's the first president to cower his party into submission."
However, lawmakers such as Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) pointed out that it was Schumer who didn't bring the appropriations bills through the proper process to enact them.
"Last year, the Senate appropriations bill, on a bipartisan basis, passed all but one of their 12 appropriations bills, and what did the majority leader, Senator Schumer at the time, what did he do? He simply refused to schedule any of those appropriation bills for a vote," said Cornyn. "So it is because of democratic dysfunction that we find ourselves now in a continuing resolution situation, rather than having already attended to what in effect was last year's business in passing appropriations bills for the entire fiscal year."
Nevertheless, Schumer declared the decision before him a "Hobson's choice" between accepting the "deeply partisan" continuing resolution or "throwing America into the chaos" of a government shutdown with President Trump at the helm.
"This, in my view, is no choice at all. While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean CR. It is deeply partisan. It doesn't address far too many of this country's needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option," said Schumer.
It is not sure how many Democrats will vote for the CR, but at least seven (depending on Sen. Rand Paul's vote), maybe eight senators from the left side of the aisle in the upper chamber will have to side with Republicans.
