Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on the Senate floor Thursday evening he would support the GOP spending bill, caving to Senate Republicans’ pressure to keep the government open and avert a partial shutdown.

Schumer’s decision to advance the Trump-backed stopgap spending bill that funds government operations through the end of September ends a high-drama shutdown fight about whether Senate Democrats were willing to plunge the country into a partial government shutdown. The government is scheduled to undergo a partial shutdown on Friday after midnight absent at least eight Democratic colleagues joining Senate Republicans to advance the six-month stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster.

“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said. “Mr. President, I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people, therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”

“A shutdown will be a costly distraction from this all-important fight [against President Donald Trump],” Schumer added. 

Enough Senate Democrats are expected to join Schumer to advance the GOP spending bill, averting a government shutdown that Senate Democrats would have likely been blamed for causing.

“The Democrats are going to have to pay the price of the shutdown because they’re inviting the shutdown,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters Thursday morning prior to Schumer’s announcement. “They seem to be proudly owning the shutdown.”

Some Senate Democrats were heard screaming while in a fierce debate with their colleagues over how to proceed on the House-passed CR Thursday afternoon.

Senate Republicans have consistently pointed out that Schumer failed to bring bipartisan appropriations bills that passed out of committee to the floor for consideration when he led the Democratic-controlled Senate during the last Congress.

“If the Democrats here in the Senate do not join us as Republicans to pass something along that nature, they will be shutting down the government,” Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told Bloomberg TV on March 5. “We know that’s a road to nowhere, a disservice to every American … We should have dealt with this last year, but Senator Schumer did not even pick up one of our appropriations bills that we passed last year.”

Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats would oppose the GOP government funding bill. He urged Senate Republicans to consider a 30-day short-term funding bill drafted by Democratic appropriators instead to give appropriators more time to negotiate an omnibus spending package, which was likely a nonstarter for Senate GOP leadership.

“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their [continuing resolution] without any input — any input — from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon. “Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR.”

“Our caucus is unified on a clean [CR through April 11] that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer said.

The Senate is slated to hold a procedural vote to advance the CR on Friday.

Featured Image Credit: United States Congress, Office of Charles Schumer