The Other McCain

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Chuck Chickens Out: No Schumer Shutdown, CR Will (Barely) Pass Senate

Posted on | March 14, 2025 | 31 Comments

Because you’ve probably already seen the news elsewhere, permit me to begin by saying that Chuck Schumer may be the leading cause of anti-Semitism in America. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a righteous Gentile, the exact opposite of a Jew-hater, a philo-Semite who is more fanatically Zionist than Bibi Netanyahu. But when I contemplate the profound dishonesty of Chuck Schumer . . . Well, it occurs to me that anti-Semitic prejudice didn’t just magically materialize out of the ether; Schumer is the embodiment of every hateful stereotype, and actually looks like a cartoon in Der Stürmer. Some pious rabbi needs to talk to senior officials of the Anti-Defamation League about their Chuck Schumer problem. The man is becoming a shanda fur die goyim.

With that preamble, now time for the news:

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared that he will not vote against moving forward with a Republican-backed stopgap bill to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.
The announcement, in which Schumer criticized President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort led by Elon Musk, marked an abrupt turnaround. Just one day ago, the top Senate Democrat insisted the Republican majority did not have enough votes for the House-passed continuing resolution to clear a key procedural hurdle.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. … I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor.
He added later: “I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.” . . .
The Democrat leader’s statement came after a Senate Democrat meeting in which reporters said they could hear Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) shouting about a shutdown.

Speaking of shouting about a shutdown, I had a rather heated phone call last week with a young friend, who unwisely spends too much of his time in the online MAGA echo chamber, and was therefore pro-shutdown.

Look, it’s not as if I’m a squishy RINO sellout. I just happen to be about 25 years older than my young friend, so I have some institutional memory on this topic. Well do I remember the fierce budget battles between Gingrich-led congressional Republicans and Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, when “government shutdown” first became a headline, and Republicans took a severe public-relations beating, only to fold their cards because Bob Dole couldn’t keep Senate Republicans in line.

This has always been the big problem facing the conservative movement. Every time we get a GOP House majority, we are confronted by the problem of the Senate filibuster. Unless Republicans can get to 60 votes in the Senate, they must negotiate with the Democrats to be able to pass anything, and so the Freedom Caucus types eventually have to accept a deal that is antithetical to their principles. Personally, I agree with Grover Norquist’s most famous quote: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” But that doesn’t change the reality of how legislation gets passed, nor does it change the political calculus of how to maintain a Republican congressional majority. Having finally gotten Trump elected to a second term, the clock is now ticking down to the 2026 midterms, and it will be some kind of miracle if we can stop Democrats from taking over Congress again. The last thing we need, at a time when the GOP is running the whole show in D.C., is to have a government shutdown, which will be perceived (by the moderate “swing” voters, at least) as evidence that Republicans aren’t competent enough to do basic “keep the trains running on time” governance.

So I found myself raising my voice in last week’s phone conversation with my young friend, who can’t see it from this kind of long-term big-picture perspective. Experience proves that we cannot suddenly change everything in Washington; conservatives must build an effective governing majority, and then proceed step-by-step through the legislative process. This kind of patient labor strikes the young hotspurs as timid, lacking the kind of a revolutionary excitement they crave. But we must remind the callow youth that they stand on the shoulders of giants, being heirs to a movement that began long before they were born. It was during the historical apogee of liberal prestige — when FDR’s New Deal commanded the allegiance of an overwhelming majority — that a tiny handful of dissenters organized what became the conservative movement in America. Hayek, Kirk, Weaver, Chambers, Regnery, Buckley — by the early 1950s, the torch had been lit, and was passed along from Taft to Goldwater to Reagan. Alas, we have lost much that ought to have been conserved, and yet despite such defeats, nevertheless the fight continues.

Pardon that digression, but there are too many people on “our” side who are encouraging an irresponsible attitude toward the current situation, and I just want everybody to calm down about it. Let the Democrats stir outrage among the kook fringe on their side, appealing to the fathomless ignorance of their voters. Back to the news:

The Senate needs three-fifths majority — or 60 votes — to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster on the GOP’s six-month continuing resolution. Because Republicans have a 53-47 majority, they cannot clear that threshold without some kind of bipartisan agreement. The spending legislation will need only a simple majority to prevail in a final vote. . . .
It was not immediately clear how many Democrats or independents will join Schumer, though his opposition to a shutdown may signal better odds for the Republican continuing resolution. Still, some on the Left have expressed stern disapproval of the plan.
Many Democrats had previously released statements claiming they would resist the GOP measure. Prior to Schumer, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the sole Democrat to openly state that he would not support blocking the Republican stopgap bill. . . .
One Republican — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — signaled that he will vote against the bill. However, that does not necessarily mean he would oppose breaking the filibuster. . . .
The GOP-led House passed a 99-page continuing resolution, which provides funds to various federal agencies and programs through September 30, via a 217-213 vote on Tuesday. All but one Republican and a single Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) — supported the measure. The rest of the Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) opposed the bill.

There was a parade of Democratic senators on Twitter yesterday declaring that they would vote against the CR, but the final vote — i.e., yea or nay on the passage of the bill — isn’t the issue. It’s the cloture vote that is the hurdle. If all 53 Republicans vote for cloture, and Chuck Schumer can deliver six Democrat “yea” votes, then when you add J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, that’s the 60 votes needed to end the filibuster. Once that’s done, getting 51 votes for passage won’t be difficult.

If we can trust Schumer when he says he is now against the shutdown, that means he’ll find a half-dozen Democrats to “walk the plank” for the sake of avoiding a shutdown (for which Schumer apparently sees that Democrats would be blamed). That buys him another six months to try to work up some kind of new wicked scheme, and I hope the ADL will intervene to stop him, because otherwise this living Der Stürmer caricature might keep stirring up Jew-hatred past the point of no return.

Now, about those Puerto Rican stereotypes . . .



 

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Category: Budget, Chuck Schumer, Congress, Senate

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