Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need For Bipartisan Action To Avoid a Republican Government Shutdown
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the need for a bicameral, bipartisan basis to avoid a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
We have less than two weeks now before September 30th. If the House and Senate do not act by then to extend government funding, the government will shut down. And there will be no ambiguity that it will be a Republican shutdown.
My friend the Republican Leader said yesterday that if Republicans shut the government down, “It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that, because we’d [the Republicans] get the blame.”
Leader McConnell is absolutely correct. A Republican shutdown would be beyond stupid for Republicans and they would get the blame, because it’s only Speaker Johnson who’s headed in that direction to assuage his hard-right, the Freedom Caucus people, who say it's questionable whether he should be Speaker if this happens.
Nevertheless, Republicans are no closer to preventing a shutdown today than they were at the beginning of September.
For the last two weeks, Speaker Johnson and House Republican leaders have wasted precious time on a proposal that everyone knows can’t become law. His own Republican Conference cannot unite around his proposal.
Today, the House is expected to vote on the Speaker’s CR, and it is expected to fail.
I hope that once the Speaker’s CR fails he moves on to a strategy that will actually work: bipartisan cooperation.
It’s the only thing that has kept the government open every time we have faced a funding deadline. It’s going to be the only thing that works this time too. Bipartisan, bicameral cooperation. That's what works. That's what we're willing and happy to do.
And the clock is ticking. If Republicans keep squabbling and careen us into a shutdown, the consequences will reverberate across the country.
A shutdown harms the economy. A shutdown causes costs to spike as supply chains buckle and lending slows down.
Federal safety programs could come to a halt, making our people and our communities less safe.
If the Republicans shut the government down, tens of thousands of children across the country could immediately lose access to Head Start. Nearly seven million women and infants and children could lose nutrition program benefits.
Food safety inspections would be jeopardized.
Some members of the military could be asked to work without pay. And border security, something very important that our Republican colleagues talk a lot about, would be thrown into chaos, increasing wait times at ports of entry. Frontline border personnel would have to do their jobs without pay.
America does not want another Republican shutdown. America cannot afford another Republican shutdown.
And make no mistake: if Republicans don’t work with Democrats in a bipartisan way – if the four leaders can’t come together because the House Republicans are so adamant – Americans will blame Republicans, particularly those in the House, for shutting the government down.
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