Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Senate Republicans Eroding The Bipartisan Appropriations Process After Pushing A Partisan Rescissions Package

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the appropriations process and the hypocrisy of Leader Thune and Senate Republicans who claim to want bipartisanship but passed a rescissions package at the behest of Donald Trump and Russell Vought. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Later today, the Senate will take a procedural vote on the MilCon-VA funding bill.

The Senate version of this legislation took some important steps to reverse a number of the awful cuts posed by DOGE and Russell Vought, particularly cuts against our nation's veterans – the people who served us, who risked their lives for us. And they want to cut their health care and cut what the VA does for them. Too bad.

That's a bad thing, and I'm glad this bill undoes a lot of that. It is also, for now, a positive thing that the Senate version's funding number is significantly higher than the House’s. That is thanks to the push Democrats made in Committee, and I thank my colleagues for their work to date.

But we will see how the floor process evolves here on the floor. Given Republicans’ recent actions undermining bipartisan appropriations, nothing is guaranteed.

Senate Democrats will meet today at our weekly caucus lunch to discuss today's vote.

As recently as yesterday, though, I heard my friend, the Republican Leader, come to the floor and talk about the need for bipartisanship in appropriations. And I heard him take issue with Democratic criticisms against the approach Republicans have taken over the last few months.

Look, we all would like to see bipartisanship. It's been a tradition in the Senate, until that sort of evaporated over the last decade. But Leader Thune is sort of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

On the one hand, Leader Thune says he wants bipartisanship.

Then on the other, he's pushing rescissions packages here on the floor.

He's allowing party-line votes to reverse bipartisan funding agreements. Well, you can’t have it both ways.

What he is doing with rescissions is the opposite of bipartisanship, because rescissions packages totally renege on agreements both sides reached on funding.

When Donald Trump and Russell Vought insist on rescissions, and an obeisant Republican Congress goes along – even though many of them know it’s wrong – it makes the spending process totally partisan.

So, the Leader’s words and his actions are a complete contradiction. He can’t have it both ways.

If Leader Thune hopes to see bipartisanship he should tend to his own garden first – and convince his Republican colleagues and the White House that bipartisanship is the way to go to do what’s best for the American people.

Republicans sold their rescissions package as cutting wasteful spending.

But we all know it's not that at all – that it was about giving Donald Trump what he wanted and using partisan means to get it all done.

Meanwhile, we know that Russell Vought and Donald Trump want Congress to greenlight yet another rescissions package for the near future.

Russell Vought even says – openly – that the appropriations process should be “less bipartisan.”

Frankly, right now, the biggest obstacle to a good faith bipartisan funding process is coming from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and from Republicans all too eager to give Donald Trump and Russell Vought whatever they want.

And, of course, Republicans, not even a month ago, pushed Donald Trump’s "Big, Ugly Betrayal" on a completely partisan vote – passing devastating cuts to Medicaid, to healthcare, to good-paying jobs, especially in rural communities, all to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

And they did it by breaking norms of the Senate, by inventing fake math, by defying the concerns of even their own members to get it done.

That kind of legislative stunt only makes it harder – harder – for bipartisanship to take root.

We will see how our Republican colleagues choose to proceed this week.

They can either keep doing Donald Trump and Russell Vought’s bidding, or they can work with Democrats on funding priorities that will serve the American people well. They can’t do both. They can't have it both ways.

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