Senate Democrats strongly criticized congressional Republicans for refusing to agree to a government funding bill with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) saying Democrats are dealing with “anarchists” who “hate the government.”
“Understand we’re dealing with anarchists,” Reid said Monday. “They hate government.”
Reid said Democrats would do “everything in their power” to help federal employees and pass a “clean” CR, which would continue current government spending levels.
“We are not going to do anything other than wait for them to pass our CR because otherwise government’s going to shutdown.
Reid was speaking at a press conference on Monday shortly after his chamber rejected the House’s government funding proposal. The majority leader was flanked by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA).
Schumer said Republicans weren’t actually compromising like they said when they were offering to pass a continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare instead of delaying it.
“That’s like saying ‘we’re compromising, instead of cutting both your arms off, we’re cutting just one of your arms off. Aren’t we great?! ‘” Schumer said.
“Never before, never before in our history has one party threatened a government shutdown if they don’t get a hundred percent of what they want on an issue totally unrelated to the budget,” Schumer said. “Rather than doing the right thing and abandoning the hard right, Speaker Boehner is holding out the forlorn hope that by sending us new demands day in and day out Democrats will capitulate. He’s wrong, and we won’t.”
Schumer said if Democrats concede to Republicans “an inch on the CR, they’ll take a mile on the debt ceiling.”
“The hard right will say ‘see! they gave in!’ And they’ll do the same thing on the full-length CR in September,” Schumer said. “We won’t be extorted now, we won’t be extorted two weeks from now, we won’t be extorted in December.”
