Sen. Chuck Schumer:
Well, Geoff, I knew when I made my decision there’d be a lot of people who disagreed with it, but I felt it was imperative that I do.
The C. — we had an awful choice, a Hobson’s choice, between a C.R. bill, which had no Democratic input, a continuing resolution to fund the government, and a government shutdown. As bad as the C.R. bill was, the shutdown, I’d say, would be 15, 20 times worse, and let me explain.
In a shutdown, the whole government shuts down, and then the executive branch solely determines what is — quote — “essential” and what is not essential. So they could say on day two of the shutdown, SNAP, food for kids, not essential. On day four, no transit funds, mass transit or other, are essential. We will only declare as essential in the transportation bill air traffic controllers.
On day six, Medicaid, half of it not essential. We can cut Medicaid, cut rural hospitals, cut community health centers. And who has the power to do this? The executive. The courts have ruled that they have no say, that the executive makes the sole determination.
Now, in the old days with a shutdown, they might do little things around the edges, but look who’s in charge now, Musk, DOGE, and probably worst of all this man, Vought — you spell his name, V-O-U-G-H-T — he’s in charge of OMB, which determines the shutdown. They want to slash the federal government. They want to cut it in half, all so they can give tax breaks to their billionaire friends.
And making it even worse, there’s no exit strategy. In other words, how long do you stay in the shutdown? It’s totally up to those evil people who hate the federal government, who hate all the good things that we have been able to do.
One of the Republican senators told the Democratic Senator, if you go to shutdown, we will be in it for six, nine months until we destroy the federal government. So, while certainly the C.R. was bad, when you just had those two choices, in my view, the shutdown had to be avoided.
