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Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) early Monday called on Senate Republicans to work with Democrats to address what he called President Trump’s “lopsided” spending priorities and pass bipartisan spending bills to avoid a government shutdown.
Schumer criticized Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) for bringing the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to the floor this week while Republican and Democratic negotiators still haven’t reached a deal on how to balance defense and non-defense spending.
“Senate Republicans claim this has been a ‘normal’ appropriations process and accuse Democrats of weaponizing the budget. Both claims are objectively false,” Schumer wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter.
“There is nothing normal about putting forward a lopsided proposal that shuts down bipartisan input and jams through one-sided bills that shortchange families, prolong a war, and shield corruption,” he wrote.
“There is nothing normal about manufacturing a partisan process and then accusing Democrats of wanting a shutdown because we refuse to rubber-stamp the result. Fighting for a budget that delivers for the American people is not weaponization. It is our job,” he added.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the vice chair of the Appropriations panel, have been negotiating for weeks over a deal to set the top-line spending targets for defense or non-defense programs but with little progress.
Democrats have accused Republicans of pushing for an increase in defense spending that would be four-and-a-half times the increase in non-defense spending.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) last month called the Republican demands for defense “way out of line.”
Republicans have disputed that claim and accused Democrats of not being willing to rule out poison-pill amendments to the annual appropriations bills.
Schumer in his Monday letter said GOP colleagues are pushing “lopsided spending bills that supersize the president’s war budget, leave families behind and let corruption go unchecked.”
“They are pushing to advance the annual NDAA while refusing to negotiate on the President’s bloated, partisan topline budget request that would dump billions more into the defense industry while long-overdue investments in American communities wait,” he wrote.
He also called on GOP colleagues to serve as a check on the Trump administration by conducting “real oversight” and bringing the military conflict with Iran to an end.
“And we can check the administration’s corruption, starting by permanently barring the President’s MAGA slush fund,” he wrote, referring to the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund proposed by the Justice Department earlier this year.
Schumer wrote that Democrats want to avoid another government shutdown in October, when federal funding is due to lapse.
“Let’s be clear about what Democrats want: we want to fund the government, avoid a shutdown, and pass strong bipartisan appropriations bills that improve people’s lives,” he wrote.
“Eleven weeks remain before the September 30 funding deadline — time enough for Republicans to abandon my-way-or-the-highway budgeting and begin the serious bipartisan negotiations required to fund the government responsibly,” he declared.
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