WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats used a standoff over a year-end spending bill to appeal to the working-class white voters they lost to President-elect Donald Trump by threatening a short government shutdown over issues important to them.
Democrats relented late Friday and agreed to allow a vote on the spending measure hours before government funding was set to expire at midnight. The bill is expected to be cleared for President Barack Obama’s signature before that deadline, avoiding a shutdown.
“We’re not going to shut down the government,” said incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “We’ve made our point.”
Red-state Democrats up for re-election in 2018 forced the standoff to insist on health-care benefits for retired coal miners and requiring the use of American steel in infrastructure projects.
Democrats said they would continue to press these issues when Congress returns early next year.
“If you’re alive today, for most of your life, over 50 percent of your energy has been given to you, has been delivered to you because of coal,” Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., who led the effort to delay he bill, said on the Senate floor. “We need to bring attention to the people who have done the work. They’re forgotten heroes. In West Virginia we feel like a Vietnam returning veteran. We’ve done everything that our country has asked of you, and now you won’t even recognize us, don’t even understand what we’ve done.”
“That’s what we’re fighting for,” he said.
The fight is the first sign of an emerging strategy for Democrats who are looking to force their Republican counterparts to respond to Trump’s campaign promises.
Schumer told reporters Thursday that the issue could easily unite Democrats and Trump.
“I hope our new president-elect, who talked and got to know the miners, will speak out,” Schumer said. “We don’t care about partisanship.”
Senate Democrats also wanted funding for the “Buy American” program included in a water resources bill that is slated to come up for a Senate vote after the spending bill is complete. Republicans have been willing to support the provision as part of temporary spending bills but have resisted including it in more-permanent legislation such as the water bill.
That tension puts Republicans at odds with Trump, who backed the concept at a rally last week.
“Whether it’s producing steel, building cars or curing disease, we want the next generation of innovation and production to happen right here in America and right here in Ohio, right?” Trump said in Cincinnati.
