By Michael Woyton
I’m still reeling from Friday’s disappointing passage of the continuing resolution to fund the government.
Led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, nine Democrats caved in to President Donald J. Felon and and the Republican Party to advance a spending bill that would keep the government open for six months.
The about face came one day after Schumer declared that the bill didn’t have enough votes for cloture, NBC News reported.
On Thursday, the senior senator from New York said he would indeed vote to advance the bill, “giving cover to other Democrats to do the same and significantly lowering the threat of a catastrophic shutdown amid broader economic uncertainty,” NBC said.
Besides Schumer, the nine non-Republicans who voted for cloture were Dick Durbin of Illinois, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hamphire, Gary Peters of Michingan, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Angus King of Maine. All are Democrats except for King who is an independent.
Lucky me — 100 percent of my state’s senators caved.
Shaheen and King later turned around and voted with all the Republicans, except for Rand Paul) to approve the actual spending package.
Explainer: The vote on cloture, which would allow the bill to come to a vote in the Senate, required 60 votes. The actual bill only required a majority vote.
Among the Democrats who were oh so pissed at Schumer and the others was New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had championed a 30-day funding stopgap instead of the CR to give lawmakers a little time to negotiate changes, The Hill reported.
“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people, in order to defend Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare,” AOC said.
“Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing Elon Musk — I think it is a huge slap in the face,” she said.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, said the CR would give the president and Musk too much power.
The ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee was quoted by Common Cause as saying the CR would close the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect national security and essentially hand over Congress’s power to an unelected billionaire.
The spending plan cut $13 billion from non-defense programs that would hurt families, students and seniors; had no disaster relief for Southern California wildfires; cut funding to the National Institutes of Health by $280 million; and raised funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $484 million, Common Cause said, among other things.
But Schumer, who was preparing to leave the District of Columbia for a book tour as soon as the vote was taken, said it was more important to keep the government open.
His rationale, according to reporting in USA Today, was that he believed that “allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option” than passing a bill he called “a terrible option.”
It really seems that the grifter-in-chief and his co-president were already tearing apart the fabric of this country, from taking legal residents into custody and either detaining them or shipping them around the country to thumbing their noses at judges who have the temerity to say what they are doing is illegal. The adjudicated rapist even suggested via social media that the pardons President Joe Biden preemptively gave to the Jan. 6 committee members were null and void.
The blowback has been pretty fierce against Schumer, so much so that he “postponed” his multi-city book tour because of “security concerns,” which as Amy Siskind of “The List” said is also known as “having to face his constituents.”
People who support Democrats deserve better leadership than what Schumer is scaring up right now.
Chuck Schumer should resign and let someone lead who knows how to fight.
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Shortly after the debacle of the continuing resolution, I was scrolling through the wasteland that my Facebook news feed has become.
Boy, was I surprised to see an ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with the smiling face of Sen. Kristen Gillibrand.
It, of course, was a money beg, but the timing could not have been worse.
Gillibrand said she was making “an urgent request,” and said, “I will do everything in my power to stand up to Donald Trump, but I need to know if Democrats are with me.”
Hey, Gillibrand, you had a chance to stand up to the golfer-in-chief on Friday — and you sold us out completely.
So, no, this Democrat is not with you.
FYI, since Friday, those sponsored DSCC ads have had Gillibrand saying she will stand up to Elon Musk.
I sincerely doubt that as well.
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On Second Thought 