Chuck Schumer Caves, Won’t Block GOP Plan to Avert Government Shutdown

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a dramatic U-turn Thursday and announced that he would vote to allow Republicans to forge ahead with consideration of their plan to avert a partial government shutdown Friday at midnight.

Schumer (D-NY) argued that if the Democrats stall a Republican plan to avert a partial government shutdown, it will give President Trump too much power and have far more devastating ramifications than the GOP spending patch.

“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer declared in a Senate floor speech Thursday evening. “Allowing [President] Trump to take even much more power is a far worse option.”

“Under a shutdown, Trump and Elon Musk would have carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” he added. “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.”

Republicans have a 53 vote majority in the upper chamber. In order to overcome the 60-vote threshold, they will likely need eight Democrats on board because Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has opposed the House GOP measure to avert a government shutdown.

Schumer joined Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) as one of the few Democrats who revealed plans to support Republicans in overcoming a filibuster.

During the lively Senate Democratic meeting before Schumer’s public announcement, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was heard “screaming” by reporters, apparently arguing that a shutdown would be far more devastating than the Republican continuing resolution (CR), or short-term spending patch to avert a shutdown.

A day earlier, Schumer had publicly slammed Republicans over their plan, calling it partisan, and urged them to consider an alternative 28-day extension of government funding instead while warning the GOP lacked votes from Democrats to barrel ahead with their bill. But during a meeting with Senate Democrats, Schumer informed his conference about his position.

“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their [continuing resolution] without any input — any input — from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday, stopping short of explicitly vowing to vote against the Republican plan himself.

“Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean [CR through April 11] that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass.”

House Republicans had passed a continuing resolution Tuesday that would keep the government funded through the end of September and only made minimal changes to government funding levels. After passing that spending patch on a partyline basis, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) adjourned the lower chamber into recess through March 24 and ruled out returning early.

The minimal changes Republicans finangled into their CR include a $10 billion increase to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and a $6 billion boost to defense.

To help pay for that, the CR pared back on about $13 billion in non-defense discretionary spending.

President Trump and Republicans had needled Senate Democrats for signaling opposition to the CR.

“If there’s a shutdown, it’s only because of the Democrats — and they would really be taking away a lot from our country and from the people of our country,” Trump chided Thursday.

“The House has done its job and passed a clean CR to fund the federal government,” Johnson said in a statement Thursday. “If Senate Democrats block an up-or-down vote, then it’s crystal clear: they are responsible for the ensuing government shutdown. Period.”

Internally, Senate Democrats have agonized over the government shutdown fight. On the one hand, many see this as the last major opportunity to extract concessions from Republicans on issues like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until the fall.

On the other hand, there are fears that a government shutdown will be particularly painful and could help embolden DOGE to be even more aggressive. There’s also risks that they could bear the blame.

“Under a shutdown, the trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired,” Schumer warned Thursday. “The decision on what is essential would be solely left to the executive branch with nobody left at the agencies to check them.”

Ironically, many of the Democrats who called for a hardball approach to the government shutdown fight would be utilizing the filibuster, something that many Senate Democrats previously attempted to pare back.

Back in 2022, Schumer took up consideration of a measure to shift to a watered-down “talking filibuster” on two pieces of voting rights legislation. That move was widely seen as the opening salvo in efforts to defang the filibuster broadly, though Schumer refrained from ever publicly backing the outright elimination of the filibuster.

Ultimately, every Democrat, except former Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kysten Sinema of Arizona voted for the switch to a talking filibuster in which the Senate would’ve considered the legislation after the minority party stopped talking.

Now, 38 of those Democratic aligned senators are still in the Senate, where they reap the benefits of the filibuster, one of the few tools the minority party enjoys.

Outside the Senate, Democrats in the lower chamber are demanding their peers hold the line against Republicans on the government shutdown fight, including ones who wanted the filibuster eliminated.

“It should be very clear to every Senate Democrat that any vote for Cloture will also be considered a vote for the bill,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wrote on X, telling her followers to call their Democratic senators and whip up opposition to the CR.

“Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead,” she had chided in another post.

Four years ago, Ocasio-Cortez had scoffed at moderate Democrats in the Senate like Sinama (who later became an Independent) for backing the filibuster.

“The filibuster wasn’t made w/ purpose. It‘s the result of an accident in rulebook revision & bloomed as a cherished tool of segregationists. Now it empowers minority rule. That’s not ‘special,’ it’s unjust,” she jabbed in 2021.

The Senate is expected to vote Friday on the CR bill to avert a government shutdown.