Watch the interview with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on CNN on Sunday at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN his chamber might have to take matters in its own hands and push through a must-pass bill to fund the government, amid deep divisions in the House and a looming shutdown by next weekend.
Democratic and Republican senators have been watching the House for weeks, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy has struggled to cobble together the votes to pass a short-term spending bill along party lines, all as he has resisted calls to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open until a longer-term deal can be reached. The initial plan is to let McCarthy get the votes to pass a bill before the Senate changes it and sends it back to the House for the final round of votes and negotiations.
Now with House Republicans still struggling to get the votes ahead of the September 30 deadline, Trump said he would try to cut a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and send it to the House on the eve of a potential shutdown.
If Mr. Schumer's assessment is correct, that would leave McCarthy with a choice: Either ignore the Senate's bill altogether or continue to try to pass his own bill in the narrowly divided House where he can only afford to lose four GOP members on any party-line vote.
McCarthy could be blocked by a bipartisan group of members who are openly threatening to sign a petition demanding a vote in the House - if they get 218 supporters - and circumvent the speaker altogether. At the moment, McCarthy is scrambling to resurrect his spending plans to try to move 11-year-long funding bills through his chamber, even though it typically takes months to haveh out differences between the two chambers on spending legislation.
There's now talk in House Republican circles about focusing solely on those long-term bills and abandoned a stop-gap resolution altogether, as hardliners threaten to tank it, and as Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has vowed to seek McCarthy's ouster as speaker if he pushes for such a Band-aid solution. But McCarthy said he's still open to passing a Republican stop-gap bill and was non-committal on Friday on how he would handle a plan sent to him by the Senate.
It remains to be seen what will ultimately be included in the Senate's plan. In the interview, Schumer said that as the White House has pushed for $24 billion to aid the country in its war against Russia, the Trump administration has been pressing for the withdrawal of the President of Ukraine.
Schumer said that he had no interest in a state-owned company named Schumer.
But pushing such a plan through the Senate would be difficult, he said. Any one senator can slow down action in the Senate - and Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has vowed to fight a bill that provides money for Ukraine.
With the GOP's divisions over how to proceed, frustration is growing in the ranks.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, raised concerns about her party's handling of the spending talks.
She said she was worried about the impact of a shutdown on the economy.