Democrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage builds

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sat 11 Oct 2025 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 11 Oct 2025 06.02 EDT


When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he was relishing his standoff with the Republicans. “Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republican part believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.

Outrage followed from Republicans, who printed out the Senate minority leader’s remark on posters and condemned it before press conferences. The shutdown has prompted federal agencies to close or curtail operations nationwide, and forced hundreds of thousands of employees to stay home without immediate pay. Schumer, Republicans argued, was being callous.

“I’ve been asked many times in interviews the last couple days, ‘You seem angry – you don’t get angry a lot.’ I don’t, but this is beyond the pale,” Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said at a press conference on Friday morning, the 10th day of the shutdown. “What Chuck Schumer is doing right now, it’s sickening.” Hours later, the White House took it upon itself to increase the misery for government employees when Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget, followed through on his threat to carry out layoffs, the extent of which was not immediately clear. Now, it was the Democrats’ turn to accuse the GOP of brutality.

“Let’s be blunt: nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer said in a statement. “They don’t have to do it; they want to. They’re callously choosing to hurt people – the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/11/republicans-democrats-us-government-shutdown

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Thune could call a vote to change the filibuster (cloture) Rule right now and it only needs a simple majority to happen. Then Thune can have the GOP, that is a majority across all 3 branches of government, enact the C.R. without any Democratic input.

And then the GOP can take the blame for any lapse of the ACA subsidies and draconian cuts in Medicaid.

Their whole shtick has been to "blame the libs" for anything that the GOP does.