Senate Democrats reverse course on shutdown despite earlier Trump mass firing concerns

Senate Democrats earlier this year were unwilling to shut down the government over fears of mass firings and deep cuts to spending, but now with a similar threat on the horizon, they seem unwilling to keep the lights on.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus have further dug into their position in the week that Congress has been away from Washington, D.C., and they appear ready to not provide the needed votes to avert a partial government shutdown by Sept. 30.

Republicans are calling foul on their position and contend that their rhetoric is hypocritical to their stance from earlier this year, when Senate Democrats — including Schumer — voted to keep the government open.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., contended that their position now is completely counter to the one they held in March when the government was again on the brink of closure, especially given their concerns that the Trump administration and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would move ahead with mass firings.

“The argument they made was that you don’t want to give Trump — basically by shutting the government down — carte blanche to do whatever he wants to do with these government agencies, and, you know, to let the OMB make decisions about who’s essential and who isn’t,” Thune said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

“Because they do fundamentally believe they are the government party,” he continued. “Which is why I think it’s going to be hard, can be really hard for them to sustain this over a long period of time, but we’ll see.”

The OMB circulated a memo to federal agencies this week that directed mass firings of federal employees beyond the typical shutdown furloughs, but Schumer chalked it up to “an attempt at intimidation.”

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare,” he said. “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

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