House Democratic leaders are staying mum on their assessment of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) amid the uproar over his support for advancing a controversial Republican spending bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D), a fellow New Yorker, has made clear that he opposes the GOP bill and wants Senate Democrats to kill it in the upper chamber. But asked multiple times on Friday if he has confidence in the Senate leader after Schumer announced he would join Republicans to help pass the bill, Jeffries declined to weigh in.
On two occasions, Jeffries dismissed the query with a terse response: “Next question.”
A third time, he said the debate is “not about one individual,” but rather the impact of the Republican bill on “everyday Americans.”
A fourth time, he accused reporters of playing “parlor games” while ignoring the practical effects of the legislation on people outside the Beltway.
“You keep engaging in these parlor games because you want to take the focus off of the American people,” Jeffries said during a press conference in the Capitol.
“What we’re saying is [that] we look forward to continuing to work with our Senate colleagues — all of them — in opposition to the extremism that’s being unleashed on the American people,” he continued. “But the focus right now is on everyday Americans — on children, on families, on veterans, on the people that we are fighting for, who Donald Trump and House Republicans are intentionally trying to hurt.”
Schumer stirred a storm of internal controversy on Thursday evening when he announced that he would not support a filibuster — the most powerful tool at the disposal of the minority Democrats — to block the GOP bill, despite his opposition to its content. A government shutdown, Schumer argued, would be worse than having the bill become law.
“The Republican bill is a terrible option,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “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.”
Schumer’s position has infuriated House Democrats of all stripes, who had been nearly unanimous in opposing the GOP bill on Tuesday and are now pressing Senate Democrats to do the same. Those critics are warning that the bill is worse than a shutdown, because it would help President Trump and Elon Musk continue dismantling large parts of the federal government.
“In addition to across-the-board cuts, it legitimizes what Trump and Elon Musk were doing in firing federal employees, in dismantling agencies, and in not spending what Congress has appropriated,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters Friday morning. “So anyone who votes for this bill on the Senate side is going to be complicit in transferring a whole bunch of power from Congress to the executive branch and authorizing Trump and Musk to not even spend what we just appropriated in this bill.”
Fueling the Democratic criticisms, Trump had applauded Schumer on Friday morning for helping to get the bill over the finish line. Anything Trump supports, the critics said, is probably a bad idea.
“When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and says, ‘You’re doing the right things, Senate Democrats,’ we don’t feel that is the right place to be,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
Jeffries said he’s had “repeated and private conversations [with Schumer] throughout the week.”
“And those conversations will remain private,” he said.
