Budowsky: Schumer leads the Dems

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) is the leader of Senate Democrats, the most influential Democrat in America, and the effective leader of the resistance to President Trump.

It is important to fully understand the enormous political and historic contribution that Schumer and Senate Democrats are making under his extraordinary leadership, while facing extreme challenges and circumstances.

{mosads}Today America is governed as a one-party state. Republicans control the presidency, the House and the Senate. Abnormal circumstances surround the conduct of Trump. The House is dominated by rightist GOP factions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who abused the filibuster rules in his campaign to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, now tries to pass major legislation with no filibuster permitted, with only Republican votes, on matters as paramount as health care and taxes that affect the lives of every American.

Senate Democrats are the only remaining check and balance in the elected branches of government. Schumer the Democratic leader is the indispensable Democrat. Schumer the skilled legislator is the indispensable American against legislation that would greatly damage health care in America and rewrite the tax code through backroom deals involving only Republicans and their lobbyist benefactors and beneficiaries.

In the most important sense, at a critical moment in American history, Schumer is the indispensable leader in opposition to the worst abuses and dangers of Trump.

It is a miracle of Schumer’s skillful leadership, the principled unity of Senate Democrats, and the courageous actions of a few Republican senators that every major legislative initiative pushed by Trump and Republicans alone has so far been defeated.

It is extraordinary that the only major legislative achievement during the first year of the Trump presidency happened when the president agreed to a key budget deal proposed by Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and opposed by Republican congressional leaders.

It is profound that Trump, who waged a presidential campaign attacking the immigrant Dreamers, may reach an agreement to help them after a dinner attended by Schumer and Pelosi to which Republican leaders were not even invited.

Schumer battles for a fundamental truth of American democracy that Senate rules must never be abused by factions that treat much of the nation as though it does not exist, which was why the founders designed the Senate as they did. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote a timeless paper about the Senate rules that emphasized this truth, would be proud of Schumer today.

Schumer led the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) in an earlier period of one-party Republican rule from 2005, when Republicans governed with a 55-45 majority in the Senate, until 2009, when a Democratic president was elected alongside a Democratic Senate majority that began after the 2006 elections, on his watch as DSCC chair. History could repeat itself.

Schumer has forged unity among Senate Democrats and understands that blue- and red-state Democrats must be part of a governing majority. He knows that America needs and voters want party leaders to work together in good faith without giving up core values and beliefs. 

I worked for the House Democratic leadership beginning when Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) was Speaker and Ronald Reagan was president, and remember well leadership meetings when O’Neill discussed his relationship and negotiations with Reagan. Schumer is right to give bipartisanship a try with high-stake issues pending, and effectively leading the Senate opposition to the wrongs and abuses that make Trump so dangerous and unpopular today.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. He holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics.