Democrats' Resolve Wearing Thin as Major Union Calls on Them to Pass GOP Stopgap

The fight over the shutdown is coming to a head this week as Democrats appear ready to cave after one of their biggest union backers, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), called for the Democrats to end the shutdown by supporting a Republican stopgap money bill, passed in the House last month, that would fund the government until at least the Thanksgiving holidays. Republicans are working on another stopgap funding bill to keep the government fully funded until Christmas.

Also, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has informed the White House that they cannot tap a $5 billion contingency fund to pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Forty-two million Americans will not receive benefits beginning Nov. 1.

To make a bad situation catastrophic for Democrats, members of the military will miss their next paycheck by the end of the week, and Obamacare premiums will skyrocket as subsidies for the new enrollment period have yet to be negotiated.

“It has a lot of impact. They’ve been our friends,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters Monday, referencing the union defection. He added that Democrats “take them seriously.”

While Democrats ponder a way to blame Republicans for this mess, despite the GOP having passed a "clean" stopgap funding bill in September, their resolve to stay the course appears to be crumbling.

“Look, I think we can still deal with health care and SNAP, but I know… the shutdown is a real challenge,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers. “Federal employees feel like they’ve been abused and also going for weeks now without pay.”

As for the AFGE defection changing his position, Warner said, "We'll see."

There had been no public Democratic defections as of Tuesday morning, but several senators expressed their nervousness. If they vote for a deal they could have had four weeks ago, there's no telling what voters will think of them. And their rabid base will see any caving to Republicans as treason.

Politico:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met Monday evening with his leadership circle, including Durbin. The entire Senate Democratic caucus will meet for a closed-door lunch Tuesday.
Schumer didn’t directly address the union’s new position during a floor speech Monday. Spokespeople for Schumer also did not respond to a request for comment on the group’s statement, in which national president Everett Kelley said, “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today.”
Instead, Schumer noted the cascading consequences of the shutdown and laid the responsibility for ending it on Trump and Republicans, saying that the president “skipped town for his second foreign trip in a month.”
“The president should stop focusing on foreign escapades, on ballrooms, on bailouts for Argentina, and start focusing on negotiating with Democrats,” Schumer said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told the press in Chicago that Democrats are standing firm.

“We want to find a bipartisan agreement that reopens the government immediately,” he said. “We’re going to continue to stand by hardworking federal employees, and our position has not changed over the last several weeks.”

Democrats were counting on the SNAP contingency fund to give them some breathing room. But Speaker Johnson explained that the $5 billion is “not legally available to cover the benefits right now” because it represents “a finite source of funds.”

There are other "standalone" bills in the Congressional hopper on military pay and other "pain points" to ease the shutdown's effect on Americans. Ultimately, it's not going to be enough.

“Piecemeal funding is not the way this should be done,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), a vulnerable incumbent whose district would be hit hard by a SNAP funding lapse, said in an interview. “Senate Democrats need to vote to pass the clean CR and stop holding the American people hostage.”

Some Republicans believe governors can tap their own sources of cash to pay for SNAP benefits, but that's unrealistic. Without a workaround, money will not be deposited in tens of millions of SNAP accounts, leading to empty EBT cards.

The Schumer Shutdown is hurting Americans. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats keep the government shut down as they demand healthcare for illegals. They own this.

Help us continue to report the truth about the Schumer Shutdown. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership.