House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi joined the criticism from congressional Democrats against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his handling of last week’s government shutdown vote.
“I myself don’t give away anything for nothing,” Pelosi said at a press conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “And I think that’s what happened the other day.”
Rather than shut down the government or agree to the GOP funding plan, which Schumer himself had criticized, Pelosi said she thinks Democrats could have tried persuading Republicans to go “a third way” with a shorter-term funding measure.
“They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they’re not agreeing to it,” she said.
Pelosi said she’s “concerned about the next time” there’s a shutdown vote later this year, but added, “What happened last week was last week. We’re going into the future.” She also noted that she still supports Schumer.
Schumer last week decided to support a GOP continuing resolution to keep the government funded through Sept. 30, averting a shutdown just hours before the deadline.
After the measure had initially passed in the House with just one Democratic vote, Schumer said he’d oppose it and criticized President Trump for not negotiating with Democrats. But he changed his mind after saying that he determined a shutdown would be a bigger threat.
Ten Senate Democrats, including Schumer, ultimately voted to advance the measure through a procedural hurdle. The final Senate vote was 54-46, with two Democrats supporting it. Schumer was not one of them.
Schumer defended himself Tuesday in an interview with “CBS Mornings,” saying he believed a shutdown would be “10 times worse” than agreeing to the Republican plan.
“I knew when I took this vote there’d be a lot of protests, but I felt I had to do it for the future, not only of the Democratic Party, but the country,” he said.
Schumer added that he believes a shutdown would have given Mr. Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency too much power in deciding which services would be cut off. He called Trump, Musk and OMB Director Russ Vought were “evil, nasty, nihilistic people.”
The criticism against Schumer led to him postponing a tour for his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” due to “security concerns.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier Tuesday that he supproted Schumer remaining as leader, after Jeffries had declined to answer last week if the party needed “new leadership.”
“Do you support his leadership of the Senate?” a reporter asked Jeffries at an event in New York on Tuesday.
“Yes,” Jeffries said.
“Yes what?” the reporter asked.
“Yes, I do,” Jeffries responded, before moving to another question.
