Schumer Calls on GOP ‘to Go Back to the Original Agreement’ Musk And Trump Killed to Avoid a Shutdown
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) addressed the looming government shutdown on Friday and urged House Republicans to return to the initial deal negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
“If Republicans do not work with Democrats in a bipartisan way, very soon, the government will shut down at midnight. It’s time to go back to the original agreement we had just a few days ago. It’s time for that,” Schumer said, referring to the continuing resolution negotiated and agreed on by both the leaders of the House and Senate. President-elect Donald Trump followed Elon Musk’s lead earlier in the week in criticizing the deal, which eventually led to Johnson rescinding the proposal.
“It’s time the House votes on our bipartisan CR, It’s the quickest, simplest and easiest way we can make sure the government stays open while delivering critical emergency aid to the American people,” Schumer continued, adding:
If the House put our original agreement on the floor today, it would pass and we could put the threat of a shutdown behind us. Our agreement would keep the government open, provide emergency aid for communities battered by hurricanes and other natural disasters. Support our seniors. Support our doctors, nurses, rural hospitals. And protect our farmers from the dairy cliff. As they said, the only, only way to get anything done is through bipartisanship.
Schumer’s floor speech came hours after members of the Senate sparred publicly on X over the initial proposal. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted on Thursday night, “We had a deal to avert a shutdown. Musk et al blew it up because it didn’t help billionaires enough. They wrote a new bill to cut cancer treatment for kids and grease a new tax cut for the rich. That failed too – and now they’re panicking because everyone is seeing the grift.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) replied to Murphy, writing, “‘We’ didn’t have a deal. Schumer, McConnell, Johnson & Jeffries had a deal. They didn’t bother to share it with the other 531 members of Congress until yesterday. And that deal sucked.”
Johnson put a second proposal up for a vote on the House floor Thursday night, which was swiftly rejected, including by nearly 40 Republicans who objected to raising the debt limit for two years – a demand made by Trump. Musk took to X and blamed the looming shutdown on Democrats, “Objectively, the vast majority of Republican House members voted for the spending bill, but only 2 Democrats did.”
While deliberately omitting the dozens of GOP defections from the bill, he concluded, “Therefore, if the government shuts down, it is obviously the fault of @RepJeffries and the Democratic Party. Plain & simple.”
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.
