I’m not stepping down, says Senator Chuck Schumer

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected calls to resign from members of his own party and defended his decision to join Republicans in voting for a spending bill that kept the government from shutting down.

For nearly two weeks, Schumer has been subject to intense scrutiny from Democrats and their voters who believe the New York senator turned his back on his party and caved to President Donald Trump’s wishes when he broke from Democrats to vote to keep the government open earlier this month. Despite the backlash, the senior Democrat feels confident he made the right decision and outright rejected calls for resignation on Sunday while speaking with Kirsten Welker on Meet the Press.

“Look, I’m not stepping down and let me just say this Kristen, I knew that when I cast my vote against the government shutdown that there would be a lot of controversy and there was,” Schumer said. But Schumer said that while the continuing resolution — the short-term funding bill that keeps the government open until September — “was certainly bad,” he believes a shutdown “would be 15 or 20 times worse.” “With Musk and DOGE and Trump and this guy (Russell Vought, director of Office of Management and Budget)... they would eviscerate the federal government,” Schumer said.

Had the government shut down, only “essential” federal employees would have been permitted to work, leaving the executive branch largely responsible for running the government. Schumer said he worries had Trump been given that authority he would have made more cuts without Democrats to push back.“On day two they could say ‘Oh SNAP, feeding hungry children? Not essential.’ On day four, ‘Mass transit, all transit, aid the states? Not essential we’re cutting it.’ On day six, ‘Medicaid, we’ll cut that by 20, 30, 50, 80 percent. We’ll go after Social Security, we’ll go after the veterans,’” Schumer said.

“Sometimes when you’re a leader, you have to do things to avoid a real danger that might come down the curve. And I did it out of pure conviction as to what a leader should do and what the right thing for America and my party was. People disagree,” Schumer said. Some Democrat voters have expressly called on Schumer to resign. Although no Democrat senators have expressly called on Schumer to resign, several have insinuated the party needs new leadership.Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told a constituent at a town hall last week that the party was “going to have future conversations about all the Democratic leadership.”

He later cryptically added, “Let me just say it’s important for people to know when it’s time to go” — seemingly a reference to former president Joe Biden’s refusal to bow out of the 2024 presidential election.Earlier, Ro Khanna, a member of the party’s progressive wing, indicated to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that he’d like to see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez face Schumer in a primary election for his Senate seat next year after the Senate Democratic leader and nine other members of his caucus backed down from a fight over legislation to keep the federal government funded through 2025.

“There were a lot of people at the Democratic (House) retreat who encouraged her (to run),” Khanna told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Schumer and other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, were pushing for the passage of a short-term “clean CR” that would have kept the government funded at current levels, and also wanted assurances that Elon Musk’s DOGE effort would not be able to touch congressionally-approved spending.

They got neither, and instead the Senate leader voted to break a filibuster on the Republican-sponsored bill that included non-defense cuts rather than risk a government shutdown. Khanna did not directly say that he was among those who’d support Ocasio-Cortez running, but alluded to as much: “When a company isn’t doing well you don’t keep the same team.” He added that he had not spoken to the New York congresswoman directly at the retreat, which took place earlier in March in Leesburg, Virginia. But, said there was ‘a lot’ of support for her.

The Independent