The ruin that was the 2024 choice for Democrats in Washington will be reproduced again and again. The last episode: the face of the minority leader Chuck Schumer in the project of expenses of the Republicans.
After announcing that the proposed expenses plan did not vote, a decision that could have led to a government closure, Schumer retreated, saying from the floor that he would vote for yes.
“I will vote to maintain the open government. I think it is the best way to minimize the damage that the Trump administration will make to the American people,” Schumer said Thursday.
Schumer framed the vote as an option between a bill of “bad” expenses and “a much worse” in a government closure.
The switch earned him the praise of President Donald Trump, but the anger of prominent Democrats.
Senator Charles Schumer, DN.Y., speaks with journalists in Capitol Hill, on March 11, 2025, in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
“The strength of our leadership at this time will demonstrate the strength of our Caucus,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in CNN on Thursday. “And I cannot urge enough an idea that is to empower and allow Donald Trump and Elon Musk at this time. It is dangerous and reckless.”
Illinois Democratic governor JB Pritzker, pushed the Senate Democrats to vote against the expense bill.
“Democrats have the ability to force bipartisanship and bring together the two parties to make a budget that reflects priorities that we should all share,” Pritzker said in a statement on Friday. He later added: “The Democrats have the power to stop the cessation of power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk and should use it. A vote does not vote on the continuous resolution.”
Former speaker Nancy Pelosi added to the battery, qualifying the financing bill as “a false choice between a government closure or a blank check that makes a devastating assault on the welfare of working families throughout the United States.” She added: “But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
It is the fight in which the Democrats will continue to meet. They have few tools in their arsenal in the capital of the nation, where the Republicans control both the Congress cameras and none dares on the Trump road and its agenda. It is a world in which collaboration through the hall, like democratic majorities, is a thing of the past.
If the Democrats want to set up a fight, it would require a coherent collective strategy, but it seems that they cannot put the same page on how to use the small power they have. Even in the face of Trump’s unpopular policies and an even more unpopular association with Elon Musk, the Democrats are managing to make their intraparty differences and the dismantled strategy.
The democratic response or the lack of it for the Republicans and the Trump agenda will be determinants of the enthusiasm of the voters of being for them in the next year of the period, their next great hope of claiming some power.
