Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, the Senate took up the "continuing resolution" (CR) that had already passed the House of Representatives by the barest of margins. And, as expected, the upper chamber passed the resolution, sending it to Donald Trump for his signature, and likely preventing a government shutdown.
The process was a little bit complicated, and we've gotten a lot of questions from readers who are confused, so we will run through the two main steps. The first vote that mattered, and which came late in the morning, was the vote for cloture. If 60 members voted for cloture, then the bill could proceed to debate and then to a final vote. If the cloture vote failed, then that would be a filibuster, and the government would likely have shut down. The possibility of doing an end run around the filibuster, through reconciliation, was not available in this case. The reason, in brief, is that the CR is not a regular budget bill. If you want the longer, much weedier explanation, you can read this.
For the cloture vote, one Republican (Rand Paul of Kentucky) voted against cloture (and, thus, for a filibuster). The other 52 Republicans voted for cloture, and were joined in doing so by these 10 members of the Democratic caucus: Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Dick Durbin (IL), John Fetterman (PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Maggie Hassan (NH), Angus King (ME). Gary Peters (MI), Brian Schatz (HI), Chuck Schumer (NY) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH). That meant the final vote for cloture was 62-38, which ended the possibility of a filibuster.
Thereafter, the senators did some debating and discussing. And finally, late in the afternoon, they voted on the actual bill. In this second vote, Paul continued to hold out. Crossing the aisle in the other direction were King and Shaheen. So, the final tally on the vote for passage was 54-46. This means that eight Democrats voted for cloture, but did not vote for the actual bill. Or, put another way, it means that of the 47 Democrats and independents, 37 thought a shutdown was the way to go, 8 thought the bill was bad but a shutdown was worse, and 2 thought the bill was OK.
Broadly speaking, the 37 Democrats who supported a shutdown did so because they feel the CR is dishonest, does too much to advance Republican priorities, does too little to rein in Elon Musk, and that Democrats across the country need the symbolism of someone standing up and fighting for their values. The 8 Democrats who opposed both a shutdown AND the bill largely agreed with this list of concerns, but believed that a shutdown would do even more harm than will passage of the bill, by giving Donald Trump and Musk a blank check to spend weeks or months hammering away at a shuttered federal apparatus. The Democrat and the independent who opposed a shutdown and favored the bill presumably feel the budgetary adjustments in the CR are appropriate. In particular, the Democrat, Jeanne Shaheen, announced her retirement this week. So, she has no real need to perform centrism or pander to a particular group of voters (unless, we suppose, she somehow thinks that the Democrat who will attempt to succeed her might be hurt by this vote, although that seems very dubious).
You might call these three perspectives "Position A," "Position B," and "Position C." Or, to be even clearer, how about "Position 37," "Position 8," and "Position 2"? We felt we had been very clear in our viewpoint on Thursday, but we got a lot of angry letters from readers who seemed to misunderstand what we wrote. We'll run some of those tomorrow, but we'll also try again to communicate what we meant to communicate. It is entirely possible to understand where the senators who favored Position 37, and the ones who favored Position 8, and maybe even the ones who favored Position 2 are coming from. And it is entirely reasonable to examine these positions and to conclude that the Position 37 group read the situation correctly, while the Position 8 and Position 2 groups read it incorrectly. It is also entirely reasonable to examine these positions and to conclude that the Position 8 group had the right of it, while the Position 37 and Position 2 groups were out to lunch. The only thing we were arguing against is explanations that are rooted in "lack of spine" or "they don't get it" or "they don't care." The days' worth of arguing and infighting is very good evidence that the 47 Democratic and independent senators understood very well the dynamics and the stakes of the situation. It's just that some of them looked at the information and reached one conclusion, some of them reached a second, and a handful reached a third.
In the short-term, the big loser here appears to be Chuck Schumer. Quite a few Democrats, both within Congress and without, have decided that he definitely reached the wrong conclusions. And for him, that's a much bigger deal, because he's in a position to exercise influence in a way that other pro-cloture Democratic senators are not. Again, the cloture vote was 62-38. If Schumer had voted with the other side, that would have made it 61-39, and only two more Democratic votes would have been required for a filibuster. By virtue of his position as minority leader, Schumer probably could have gotten those two votes.
So, if Democrats are going to point the finger at any one person, it's Schumer. And many Democrats are doing just that. Most notably, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was quite obviously livid yesterday. And while it is almost inconceivable that Jeffries would publicly badmouth Schumer, Jeffries was asked if the Democrats should jettison Schumer, and responded: "Next question." In Washington-speak, such an answer says volumes. Similarly, the left wing of the Party is furious with Schumer. And, in this context, we do not use "left wing" to mean "the far-left fringe." We use it to mean "pretty much anyone to the left of Joe Biden." In other words, a pretty large segment of the Party.
It is not impossible that Senate Democrats will decide that Schumer has lost his fastball, and is part of a Biden-Pelosi generation whose time is past, and will boot him from the leadership mid-session. Unlike most things right now, that is actually within the power of the Party to do, and it would certainly send a message that the Democrats are responding to the anger of their base. That said, this is not a likely outcome. Since the era of majority and minority leaders dawned in the Senate (roughly a century ago), only two party leaders have departed the job in the middle of a session of Congress, and in both cases, it was because they also departed this plane of existence (RIP, Charles McNary and Everett Dirksen). The obstacles to dumping a party leader in the Senate are huge; recall that Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) tried to cashier Mitch McConnell (R-KY) last session, and it went nowhere. However, the odds of Schumer keeping his job beyond the 119th Congress are pretty low, we would guess.
In the longer term, there's a fair chance that Donald Trump will be yesterday's biggest loser. To start, we can find no reports that he's actually signed the CR yet. That's not unusual; the government doesn't really "shut down" at 11:59 p.m. Friday, and so it's common for a president to sign such legislation on Saturday morning. However, there have been occasions in the past where Trump was expected to sign a funding bill, and then changed his mind at the last moment. In fact, such a stunt led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019. It's well within the realm of possibility Trump will make the same choice again, deciding that the benefits of a shutdown are so great, the blowback from causing the shutdown is worth it. Plus, he'd probably blame the shutdown on Biden, anyhow.
And if Trump signs, well, he and his party will have won the day. But they will also own the economy 100%. And if the stock market keeps slipping, and if inflation continues to rise, and if unemployment is up again next month, the President and his party won't have an easy argument for why it's really the Democrats' fault. (Z)