Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) today issued the following statement about his vote against cloture on the MAGA continuing resolution:
“Republicans out to maximize Trump/Musk executive power left Democrats no good road on funding the government. They forced a choice between two MAGA options – both would harm the American people and give away the power of Congress to rein Trump in. That’s where our focus must be.
“A shutdown hands horrible powers to Trump and Musk to unlock emergency authorities, fire employees wholesale, and shutter agencies, using arcane shutdown tools like contingency plans, essentialness determinations, and reductions in force. Trump could assert through all this that Congress abdicated its power, giving him maximum plenipotentiary executive authority, and courts might buy that.
“The other option was called a continuing resolution, but it wasn’t a real one. Republicans baked into this fake CR huge amounts of evil, shrinking the power of Congress, creating slush funds for Trump and Musk, and giving them unprecedented powers to cripple the government. Relishing the prospect of a shutdown, they made it as bad as they could.
“Either way, we are left with an increasingly maniacal and out-of-control executive commanding a supine Republican-controlled Congress so petrified that they instantly and automatically surrender their constitutional power. The question of which is worse is the wrong question, and a quarrel over how Democrats should have voted is the wrong quarrel. This set-up by MAGA extremists was to give Trump and Musk unprecedented power to cripple government, either way. That’s where the harm is, and that’s where the blame is.
“America is in an emergency. Democrats are fighting hard from the minority, and there will be times when Republicans force bad alternatives upon us. The only way we will get out of this is to hang together with persistent and relentless focus on the real danger we are facing.”
