On Monday, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries urged their Republican counterparts to convene right now in order to prevent a government shutdown that could occur as early as the end of next month.
The Democratic congressional leaders, who are both from Brooklyn, invited Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) to meet this week to discuss a plan to pass the budget for the following year. Normally, this would require negotiating with the minority party to get the 60 votes required in the Senate to prevent a filibuster.
According to Schumer and Jeffries, it is our duty to govern for all Americans and to cooperate across party lines in order to prevent an agonizing and needless shutdown at the end of September.
The Democratic leaders stated that they are prepared to engage in bipartisan negotiations with Republicans to reach a budget agreement that will sustain government operations past September 30.
However, they charged that President Trump and Republican leaders were planning to run the government without consulting Democrats and to shut it down if they didn’t get their way.
The Democratic leaders wrote that many members of your party are planning to go it alone and keep passing laws based only on Republican principles.
Funding from the government will end on September 30. When lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., following Labor Day, they say they will probably need to pass a stopgap funding measure in order to avoid a shutdown.
Democrats want Republicans to commit not to reverse course later in the year and adopt a rescissions package that cuts some of the same spending in return for their assistance in approving new budget measures.
Republicans recently used the legislative loophole that rescissions only require a simple majority in the Senate, rather than a 60-vote bipartisan supermajority, to vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and claw back $9 billion in previously appropriated revenue.
Additionally, Schumer and Jeffries are urging the administration to release funds that it has unilaterally withheld despite Congress having allotted them last year.
Like they did with Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans have hinted that they would try to use the esoteric reconciliation procedure to pass one or more policy legislation before the November elections.In order to finance tax breaks for the affluent and large corporations, that bill, which polls indicate is extremely unpopular with people, implemented drastic cuts to health care spending.
