The 27 Senate Democrats Who Flip-Flopped After the ‘Schumer Shutdown’ Failed

Democrats Durbin, Casey, Schumer, Kaine
Sean Moran

Twenty-Seven Senate Democrats flip-flopped in favor of funding the government after the “Schumer Shutdown” failed.

The House and Senate approved a stop-gap spending bill on Monday, sending the bill to President Donald Trump to sign.

The original Senate motion to invoke cloture to end debate on the stop-gap spending bill failed, 50-49, after Democrats wanted to include a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) illegal amnesty in the bill.

After the “Schumer shutdown” failed, 27 Democrats flip-flopped from their Friday vote to shut down the government to approving a three-week short-term spending bill. These Democrats are:

  1. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
  2. Michael Bennet (D-CO)
  3. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
  4. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
  5. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
  6. Tom Carper (D-DE)
  7. Bob Casey (D-PA)
  8. Chris Coons (D-DE)
  9. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)
  10. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
  11. Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
  12. Michael Heinrich (D-NM)
  13. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
  14. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
  15. Patty Murray (D-WA)
  16. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
  17. Gary Peters (D-MI)
  18. Jack Reed (D-RI)
  19. Brian Schatz (D-HI)
  20. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
  21. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
  22. Tina Smith (D-MN)
  23. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
  24. Tom Udall (D-NM)
  25. Mark Van Hollen (D-MD)
  26. Mark Warner (D-VA)
  27. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

The Washington Post noted that many Senate Democrats could damage their chances of winning reelection in states that President Donald Trump won in 2016, most notably Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), the leading candidate to challenge Sen. Casey, repeatedly attacked Casey for putting illegal immigrants over American citizens.

Barletta said in a statement on Monday:

Senate Democrats displayed a disgraceful level of obstruction during the Schumer Shutdown. Their antics threatened our military readiness and denied American kids the longest extension of CHIP funding in the program’s history.  In exchange for ending their manufactured chaos, they demanded amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants with zero enforcement provisions to prevent the problem from happening in the future.  Now, Senate Democrats have agreed to reopen the government on the basis of talks continuing on DACA, which were already happening in the first place.  The Schumer Shutdown was reckless, dangerous, and showed our nation that Senate Democrats believe illegal immigrants come before American citizens.  These shutdown shenanigans are a disgraceful and irresponsible tantrum by a select few.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor on Monday, “I think if we learned anything is that a strategy of shutting down the government over the issue of illegal immigration is something that the American people didn’t understand.”

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