Democrats aren’t so sure that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should continue to front the party.
Several Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives believe that the New York lawmaker should “step down” after he pushed his caucus to back the GOP budget resolution Friday.
They include Illinois Representative Delia Ramirez and Maryland Representative Glenn Ivey.
“I’ve got no personal beef with Schumer, I think he’s a talented guy, but for me the bigger question is: Is he going to do this again?” Ivey told Axios Wednesday, looking toward the next government funding deadline in September. “When this comes back up in six months, is he going to take the same approach or not? If he’s still on that track, I’m for moving on.”
But Ivey and Ramirez’s colleagues believe that more lawmakers interested in a Schumer resignation are hiding in the woodwork.
“I think there are some already there but just haven’t been asked directly or avoided the question,” an anonymous House Democrat told Axios.
The progressive group Indivisible called on Schumer to “step aside” on Saturday, accusing him of having “surrendered leverage” while handing Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their congressional allies the keys to dismantle government agencies and public services.
Schumer, along with eight other Democrats in the upper chamber, voted in favor of a budget that will strip billions from Medicaid in order to pay for an extension to Trump’s 2017 tax plan, a proposal that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.
Republicans could not have passed the short-term budget without their help.
Schumer saw the vote as a potential salve on the eve of a government shutdown that he and his allies believed would temporarily hand Trump more control. House Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, strongly disagreed, arguing that the party should instead have pushed for an extension that would give them more time to negotiate the details of the resolution.
Frustration has apparently bubbled all the way to the top. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dodged a question last week on Schumer’s future, though by Tuesday, he clarified that he still believes Schumer should be involved in Democratic leadership.
Medicaid insures more than 70 million Americans. The popular social program, established in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, represents nearly $1 out of every $5 spent on health care in the U.S. It pays for more than 41 percent of births in America, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and is the largest financier of nursing home care in the country, according to HuffPost.
