Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Monday on MSNBC’s “All In” that the Democrats would try and work with Republicans but not by “sacrificing the bold, progressive change that America demands.”
Schumer said, “The question that everyone’s asking is why is there such a dichotomy between the Republican voters, electorate, and the Republican Senators. For instance, 60% of Republicans think the ARP, the American Rescue Plan, the most comprehensive progressive piece of legislation we passed in decades, is a good thing. How many Republican Senators voted for it? Zero. Why? It’s because Trump still controls them. They’re still afraid of him. He wants nothing to succeed. He’s sort of a — nihilist is too strong a word. He’s an egotistical man who wants to bring everything down because he lost, and so you have this division. It ends up hurting the Republican Party, but it also hurts America. Now we’re not going to let that stop us. We’d always prefer to work with the Republicans when we can, but if with can’t, just as we just showed in the American Rescue Plan, if they’re not with us, we’re going to get it done, and the American people will be on our side.”
He added, “We always prefer our Republicans to work with us but only to produce big, bold action. We’re not going to repeat the mistakes of 2009 and 2010, where they dragged things out for a year and a half, and then we got one good thing done but certainly not enough, and they cut that stimulus bill, the original ARA bill, by so much that the recession dragged on for years. We’re not repeating that mistake. If they will join with us, of course, we’ll sit down and talk with them and see if they have this suggestion or that. But not at sacrificing the bold, progressive change that America demands and America needs, and we’re going to get it done.”
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