Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has not been backing the historically bipartisan appropriations process used to compile the federal government’s budget for the next fiscal year in protest of the Trump administrations’ power grab on Congress’ power of the purse.
Murphy and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are both opposing their party’s participation in the appropriations process. Both have argued in recent weeks that Democrats can’t trust Republicans or the Trump White House to actually stick to any bipartisan government funding agreements or spend money how Congress allocates it. Where exactly other Senate Democrats plant their flag on the issue will become increasingly important in coming weeks as the Democratic conference decides whether to help Republicans keep the government open when the fiscal year ends.
In recent weeks, Murphy, the top Democratic Homeland Security appropriator, has opposed all spending measures advanced during committee markups. Murphy has said he thinks drafting funding bills is pointless — as long as President Donald Trump intends to unilaterally withhold billions of congressionally authorized funds and strong-arm Republicans into clawing back more through constitutionally backwards rescissions requests.
“I’m nothing if not consistent. I don’t like the position I’m in,” Murphy told Politico in a recent interview, referring to the committee markup votes. “It’s lonely. 28-to-1 votes are lonely.”
Trump “doesn’t give a fuck what we write” into spending legislation, Murphy added. “Every single day, there’s new evidence that our democracy is falling, and you’ve got to take stands. You have to take fights,” Murphy added. “I just worry — every time that we go along with these appropriations bills, we’re putting a bipartisan veneer of endorsement on an illegal process that’s ultimately part of his campaign to destroy our democracy.”
Murphy also voted “no” during the floor vote for the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill the Senate took up before leaving for their lengthy August recess.
“They can say that they’re going to honor the words on the page,” Murphy said, according to Politico. Yet if Trump “decides to ignore the law,” he continued, “I just don’t think that my Republican colleagues are going to really fight to protect it.”
The Connecticut Democrat’s stance is foreshadowing the internal fight that may soon rise among Democratic senators.
When Congress returns from its lengthy August recess, lawmakers on Capitol Hill will only have a few weeks to work something out before the government runs out of funding at midnight on Sept. 30.
Democrats will soon have to make a decision. They can either refuse to help the GOP pass a bill — appropriations bills or continuing resolutions — and get blamed by Republicans for the government shutdown that will result, which may give Trump and the Office of Management and Budget even more power to choose how to distribute funds. Or they can choose to work with Republicans to avert a shutdown again like they did this spring, surrendering a key point of leverage to force the Trump administration to stop illegally withholding funds.
Murphy may be the lone Democratic appropriator attempting to take a stand against the Trump administration’s impounding, but he is not alone within his larger caucus.
Warren, of course, took to the Senate floor last month expressing her opposition to participating in the appropriations process. She argued that Democrats can’t trust Republicans and Trump to uphold any bipartisan government funding agreement.
Her speech came after she also voted against the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill.
“I voted no on that funding bill because even if this bill becomes law, I don’t believe Donald Trump has any intention of following that law,” Warren said on the Senate floor. “And I’m not willing to be a helpmate on another one of Donald Trump’s scams.”
Warren also pointed to the White House and Office of Budget Management’s (OMB) actions since Trump took office, including its moves to illegally withhold congressionally approved funds and its constitutionally backwards use of the rescissions process.
“Why should Democrats come to the table and negotiate in good faith and throw our support behind a quote-unquote bipartisan bill, only for Republicans to turn around after the deal is done and, somewhere down the line, delete any parts of the deal Trump doesn’t like?” Warren asked.
Murphy and Schatz are a couple of my favorites.
Trump is essentially creating his own version of the line item veto, only with added power. Even with the current supine GOP leadership, it feels remarkable that senators of any stripe would effectively collude with ceding power to the Executive. Doing so undermines the entire set of governing assumptions that the founders built into the Constitution.
Bringing a dull pen-knife to a gun fight. Schumer’s a smart legislator who’s been tossed into a far more primitive and ruthless version of the Congress. Makes me wish there was a younger Nancy Pelosi out there. Some may not have liked her, but Pelosi could do ruthless when it was called-for.
It’s all well and good that Senators Murphy and Warren are speaking out and taking stands, and I support them in that, but it does no good if the media don’t report it in full (and they are not), including Trump’s repeated constitutional and legal violations with respect to funding and appropriation, the GOP Congressional caucus supporting him in all of that in violation of their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and absolutely including the corrupt Supreme Court’s repeated unconstitutional rulings allowing him to do so - essentially, giving him free rein on everything, and the Constitution, the rule of law, and the structure of the Federal government be damned.