Democrats Running For Senate To Schumer: Don't Give In On Government Funding

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s administration is threatening mass firings of federal employees, putting maximum pressure on Senate Democrats in the hopes that they’ll drop the health care concessions they’re demanding in order to avoid a government shutdown.

But many Democratic candidates running to join the Senate are urging their party’s leadership not to back down, further squeezing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who faced widespread intraparty criticism after allowing a Republican-drafted spending bill to pass in March.

HuffPost contacted a dozen campaigns of major Senate Democratic candidates running in next year’s midterm elections. Nearly all of them said their party’s leadership ought to stand its ground and use its leverage to roll back the GOP’s Medicaid cuts and extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, a position that is fast becoming a litmus test within the Democratic Party and one that is shared by progressive candidates as well as those more aligned with the center of the party.

“Michiganders are seeing everything, especially their healthcare, get more and more expensive, and until Republicans agree to reverse their Medicaid cuts and make sure health care coverage is affordable for Michiganders, they can’t count on my vote,” Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate Democrat who is running to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), said in a statement to HuffPost.




https://www.huffpost.com/entry/government-shutdown-funding-democrats_n_68d57ca9e4b0b2f96b45412d