Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is celebrating his decision to shutter the government despite Americans facing the accumulating impacts of a prolonged funding lapse.
Schumer claimed Wednesday that Democrats are winning the shutdown fight in the eyes of voters, sparking the ire of Republicans who argue the top Democrat is more concerned with scoring political points than avoiding the financial toll of an indefinite shutdown. Millions of Americans are on the verge of missing a paycheck while businesses nationwide who interact with the federal government could proceed with layoffs due to the economic fallout.
“We knew that this would be a hard fight. It is still a hard fight,” Schumer told Punchbowl News in a sit-down interview Wednesday. “But every day we’re getting better and better as the message sinks in more and more deeply.”
“Every day gets better for us,” Schumer added.
Schumer has largely kept his caucus in unison to repeatedly vote against reopening the government as the shutdown stretches to the nine-day mark on Thursday. No other Democrat has thus far joined the trio of Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and independent Maine Sen. Angus King, who caucus with Democrats, to vote for a clean extension of government funding favored by Republicans.
Top Republicans and the White House immediately slammed Schumer’s comments for being callous as some Americans begin to experience financial stress and disruptions due to the shutdown.
Active-duty service members, among other federal employees, could miss their next paycheck if government operations are not restored by Oct. 15.
“While federal workers stress over missed paychecks, military families turn to food pantries, and airports around the country face delays — Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are bragging that ‘every day gets better’ for them,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X. “What a disgusting and revealing statement. Democrats are gleeful about inflicting pain on the American people.”
“Democrats are smiling while military families suffer,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said. “They are the party of power over people and politics over paychecks.”
Other Senate Democrats have acknowledged the pain of the shutdown without reversing course to reopen the government. Democratic lawmakers are largely in agreement that Republicans must agree to $1.5 trillion in spending demands in exchange for their votes to restore government operations.
Hickenlooper told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday that flight cancellations and limited access to national parks during the fall tourism season due to the shutdown is “a real problem.”
However, the Colorado Democrat had voted with Schumer to continue the shutdown indefinitely minutes earlier.
Schumer and a majority of Democrats are making a bet that voters will blame Republicans for the shutdown’s economic fallout due to the GOP trifecta in Washington.
“Even the pain that’s caused — the data we have seen and just talking to people, they blame Trump,” Schumer told the outlet. “When things are actually shut down, they blame Trump. When things aren’t happening, they blame Trump. Because he’s in charge. You don’t need a political science PhD to understand they control everything.”
The minority leader has consistently obfuscated the fact that most legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate. Republicans control a 53-seat majority, meaning that government funding bills need buy-in from Democrats to clear the upper chamber.
A spokesperson for Schumer did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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