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What Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) warned about became a reality Thursday evening as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to spin and justify the fact that a group of Democratic Senators are going to stab their own supporters and their country in the back by voting to give Trump and Elon Musk more power because they don’t want to be blamed for a government shutdown.
We likely won’t know the names of all of the traitors until the vote because, so far, only Schumer has stepped up and tried to explain why they are empowering Trump. Schumer was trying to justify the unjustifiable.
Here are Schumer’s remarks:
Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down tomorrow at midnight.
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 stay financially afloat.
Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer, and suffer greatly.
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.
He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he’s the first president to cower his party into submission.
So, this Republican rejection leads us to a decision.
And it’s not really a decision, it’s a Hobson’s Choice: 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 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.
And before I explain why, let me be clear about one thing.
No one on my side of the aisle wants a government shutdown.
Members who support this CR do not want a government shutdown.
Members who oppose this CR do not want a government shutdown.
Members who oppose this CR want the Republicans to take their responsibilities more seriously and to negotiate spending bills that will address the many needs of the American people.
I respect them for that.
Unfortunately though, this Republican party is the party of Trump.
As bad as passing the CR is, as I said, allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.
First, a shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.
Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel “non-essential,” furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.
The decision on what is essential would be solely left to the executive branch, with nobody left at agencies to check them.
In short, a shutdown would give Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE, and Russell Vought the keys to the city, state and country.
A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country.
And don’t take my word for it: Musk has said aloud he wants a shutdown, and public reporting has shown he is already making plans to use the shutdown to expedite his destruction of key government programs and services.
Musk told reporters, “If the job is not essential, or they are not doing it well, they obviously shouldn’t be on the public payroll.”
Many federal employees and government experts are rightly worried that a temporary shutdown could lead to permanent cuts.
Second, if we enter a shutdown, Congressional Republicans would weaponize their majorities to cherry-pick which parts of the government to reopen.
In a protracted shutdown, House and Senate Republicans would pursue a strategy of bringing bills to the floor to reopen only their favorite departments and agencies, while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.
Third, a shutdown is not a political game – shutdowns means real pain for American families.
For example, veterans’ services. I believe a shutdown could cause regional VA offices to reduce staff, delay benefits processing, and curtail mental health services – abandoning veterans who earned and depended on those resources.
Social Security and senior services: I believe a shutdown could greenlight Trump to slash even more administrative staff at Social Security offices – delaying new applications, benefit adjustments, and forcing seniors to wait even longer for the benefits they’ve earned.
Extremely troubling, I believe, is that a shutdown could stall federal court cases – one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness. It could furlough critical staff, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals, and clogging the justice system for months or even years.
This administration has shown an unfathomable willingness to sacrifice American families and their wellbeing to advance their own political agenda.
A shutdown positions them to do this on overdrive.
Finally, there is one more reason I oppose a shutdown: President Trump and Republicans leaders would like nothing more than to pull us into the mud of a protracted government shutdown.
For Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift.
It would be the best distraction he could ask for from his awful agenda.
Right now, Donald Trump owns the chaos in the government.
He owns the chaos in the stock market.
He owns the damage happening to our economy, from one end of the country to the other.
The stock market is crashing, consumer confidence is plummeting.
Donald Trump is hoping for a shutdown, because it will distract from his true agenda: delivering massive tax cuts to the rich paid for on the backs on American families.
He wants to gut Social Security, hollow-out Medicaid, slap taxes on consumer goods through his reckless trade wars.
In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen and which to keep closed, instead of debating the damage Donald Trump’s agenda is causing the American people.
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.
There is nobody in the world – nobody – who wants to shut the government down more than Donald Trump and more than Elon Musk.
We should not give it to them.
And make no mistake Democrats will continue to fight what Donald Trump is doing.
Everything that Trump, Musk, and Republicans have done so far has a very clear goal, again: cutting taxes for billionaires, eviscerate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
This is the fight that matters most, and the fight we must focus on.
All the chaos we have seen, all the lawlessness, all the grift and corrupt behavior, it’s all about rigging the system in favor of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of working Americans.
This is the fight the American people need to see.
This is the fight that Democrats will win.
A shutdown will be a costly distraction from this all-important fight.
The group of turncoat Democrats who will vote to give Trump what he wants are pretending like these are two different fights.
They are not.
A shutdown is part of the same fight.
How do Democrats expect voters to be enthused and show up for them on Election Day when they so cowardly sell out America because they are afraid of blame?
A shutdown would not distract from the fight. It would focus the fight on what Trump and his party are doing.
A shutdown would envigorate people around the country because they would see Senate Democrats fighting for them.
Sure, the corporate media would blame Democrats, but they would do that anyway.
Not all Democrats and members of the Senate caucus are weak cowards. Senators like Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, and Chris Van Hollen have already released statements explaining why they are voting no.
House Democrats risked their seats by voting almost unanimously against this awful CR. House Democrats fought.
A group of Senate Democrats are choosing to cut and run.
It is not enough to say that some members of the same party who warned the American people before the election that Trump was a threat to democracy don’t deserve your support if they vote for this CR.
Any Democrat who votes to empower Trump, because that is what voting for this CR does, doesn’t deserve one nickel of donor money and should face a primary.
I will never tell anyone what to do with their money, but if any of these Democrats ever show up in my texts, emails, or voicemails asking for money, they will be told to get lost.
We see through the excuses, and what is revealed is a group of arrogant and weak individuals who are placing themselves ahead of the nation.
This is a slap in the face that won’t be forgotten and another step toward Democrats losing supporters and demoralizing their party.
What do you think about the Senate Democratic cave? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
