Vice President JD Vance used a decades-old video clip of then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to rip the current Senate minority leader over his refusal to back a spending plan to keep the government open.
Vance retweeted a clip of Schumer on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1996 railing against providing taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens because it only encourages more illegal immigration.
The tweet was meant to address Democrats’ demand to include $1.5 trillion in new spending in the current continuing resolution to keep the government funded and open, some of which would be spent on healthcare for people in the U.S. illegally.
“Chuck Schumer once recognized that it was disastrous to give illegal aliens rewards for breaking the law,” the vice president wrote. “Now he wants to shut down the government unless we…reward illegal aliens for breaking the law.”
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The government shut down at midnight after the continuing resolution passed by the House failed in the Senate after only three Democrats joined Republicans to support it. The measure needed 60 votes, but fell short at 55.
Vance elaborated on the shutdown Wednesday in an interview with CBS’s morning show.
“First of all, why are we in this position? We’re in this position because Senate Democrats decided they were gonna shut down the government despite the fact that the House decided to keep the government open… It was one faction of one branch of government – the far-left faction of the Senate Democrats – who decided to shut down the people’s government,” he said.
“There are people who benefit from low-income food programs, families like mine who benefitted from thse programs, are gonna see those programs disappear,” he continued. “There are critical services that the Democrats have taken hostage because they have a policy disagreement.”
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Republicans are also blaming Schumer for reversing his position from earlier this year when he joined with the GOP in passing the stopgap budget funding measure that expired at midnight.
During and after the Senate’s vote to fund the government earlier this year, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer faced sharp criticism from progressive members of his party as well as outside groups. Schumer defended the decision repeatedly, saying on several occasions that a government shutdown “would have been the greatest disaster we have.”
“I had to do the right thing — for the country and our party,” Schumer told Meet the Press in March
“The alternative being a shutdown makes things worse — much worse,” he told left-wing host Chris Hayes during an MSNBC interview days earlier.
The continuing resolution, which would extend government funding through Nov. 21 to allow Congress additional time to set fiscal year 2026 spending priorities, passed the House largely along party lines on Sept. 19.
The Senate is scheduled to take up the bill again on Wednesday, with further votes expected later in the week and into the weekend until an agreement is reached or Democrats decide to yield, Fox News reported.
House Republicans have remained outside Washington as part of an effort to pressure the Senate to act on their funding bill. By contrast, House Democrats returned this week, seeking to draw a distinction between their approach and that of the GOP.
Along with concerns about being left out of negotiations, Democrats pressed for the continuing resolution to include an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies first enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and set to expire at the end of 2025.
Republican leaders indicated they were open to discussing the healthcare funding later in the year but accused Democrats of jeopardizing government funding by insisting on tying the measure to their demands.