WASHINGTON -- Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the point person for Senate Democrats in their negotiations over government funding resolutions, endorsed the latest stopgap fix during an appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday.
The New York Democrat said he was comfortable with a three-week continuing resolution (that included $6 billion in cuts) to keep long-term negotiations going -- all but ensuring that the government won’t shut down on March 18 when funds would have run out.
“Yes,” Schumer said, when asked if he could back the short-term resolution, “and it gives me some cause for optimism that we can finish this [continuing resolution], the remaining six months, pretty well. There were negotiations between the president, Senate Democrats, House Republicans, and the proposal that was made, I’m for it. It takes cuts that Democrats have proposed, cuts that get rid of fat but don’t hit into the muscle the way HR 1 did, and it leaves out all these extraneous riders on things like abortion, global warming, other things that would make it far more difficult to get to a budget decision.”
Schumer’s optimism over finding an agreement on a six-month measure was, perhaps, more noteworthy than his endorsement of the three-week CR itself. Democrats have moved, step by step, toward the Republican-preferred level of spending cuts. And for it, they’ve received little if any giveback.
Privately, of course, negotiations are proceeding not just over funding levels but over the policy riders in the continuing resolution. But publicly the two parties still seem apart. Indeed, moments later in his "Meet the Press" interview, Schumer demanded more give from the GOP-leadership, with a bit of sternness that hardly suggested satisfaction or confidence about the state of negotiations.
“The ball shifts to Speaker Boehner. We have put some cuts on the table, we are willing to put more,” said Schumer. “But they have not said a single place where they would move off HR1, and now it can’t pass. … He may have to make a coalition with some Democrats in the House.”