Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) piled on to the mounting criticism of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) following his decision last week to break with Democrats and support Republicans' stopgap government funding bill.
Schumer has been in "damage control" mode in recent days after the Senate passed a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown. Democrats have said the bill was crafted without their input, with Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) saying it "codifies much of this chaos that Elon Musk is wreaking havoc on the federal government."
On Tuesday, Pelosi took the top Senate Democrat and longtime ally to task.
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“I myself don’t give away anything for nothing,” Pelosi told reporters during a news conference at a children’s hospital in San Francisco, according to Politico. “I think that’s what happened the other day.”
Pelosi said Schumer still has her support, but that Schumer snatched Democrats' leverage to fight Republicans' proposed cuts, which will likely impact social programs such as Medicaid.
“We could have, in my view, perhaps, gotten them to agree to a third way,” Pelosi said, according to the report, referring to a potential 30-day deal to avoid a shutdown while negotiations continued as opposed to a 6-month extension. “They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they’re not agreeing to it — and that then they would have been shutting (the) government down.”
President Donald Trump signed the stopgap bill into law, which extends government funding through Sept. 30. It includes $13 billion in domestic spending cuts but increases defense spending by $6 billion. The legislation also cuts $20 billion from IRS enforcement funding and does not include disaster relief for California.
