On "Forbes Newsroom," Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) reacted to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's vote to support a continuing resolution that averted a government shutdown, plus discussed a poll that shows the Democratic party's popularity has hit a historic low.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once
00:08again is Congressman Glenn Ivey. Congressman, thank you so much for coming on.
00:12Thanks for having me. Congressman, this week during a town hall, you were met with applause
00:17when you floated the idea that it may be time for Senate Democrats to pick new leadership
00:22as we move forward. And this came after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a 180.
00:27He voted to support the continuing resolution, along with a handful of Democrats in the Senate.
00:33House Democrats, however, were united almost in voting against it. Every single one except
00:38for one voted against it. Were you blindsided by Chuck Schumer's decision? Talk to us about
00:44your comments here. Yeah, I think we were caught by surprise.
00:48We being House Democrats, you know, as you mentioned, Hakeem Jeffries is the leader for
00:53House Democrats. And he rallied us. I think it was 213 out of 214 all voted together to
01:00block the spending bill that the Trump administration was trying to push through. And the expectation
01:07was that we'd get similar support in the Senate. In fact, Senator Schumer, who was the Senate
01:12Democratic leader, had announced that they were going to vote against the spending bill
01:19just as we had. He flip flopped the next day and brought some other Senate Democrats
01:25with him just enough to pass the cloture hurdle. And then the bill passed. So we were deeply
01:32disappointed and shocked by what had happened there. And, you know, I went home and started
01:39talking to people in my district. They were disappointed and upset, to say the least.
01:46And, you know, I've got tens of thousands of government employees in my district, and
01:50I think they knew that this was going to be one of our few chances to try and block what
01:54the Trump administration is doing as far as attacking government employees and government
01:59service. And so they were deeply disappointed, too.
02:02And you're not the only House Democrat to publicly say this. Just in my conversations
02:07alone since last week, I had Congressman Barra, as well as Congressman Seth Moulton, express
02:13their disappointment with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well. But Schumer
02:17defended his decision by saying, hey, I had two horrible choices and keeping the government
02:22open was better than shutting it down. And then in that case, President Trump, as well
02:26as Elon Musk, would have full reign to do whatever they want. Those guardrails would
02:31be loosened. Do you think shutting down the government was the better idea?
02:35Yeah, I think the way it actually would have played out is the government might have shut
02:40down for a day or two. But one of the things that the House Democrats did, and we encouraged
02:46the Senate Democrats to do, was to offer a counterproposal of a 30-day pushback. You
02:53know, give us 30 additional days to keep working on this and see if we can reach an agreement.
02:58In fact, most of these continuing resolutions are exactly that. They're like one or two
03:03pages long. It strikes one date. In this instance, it would have been, I think, March 14th. And
03:08it had something 30 days or 60 days down the road so you can continue to work. Instead
03:14of doing that, though, this bill was about 100 pages long. And it had, I called it a
03:20Trojan horse. It had all kinds of things in there that I thought undermined our position
03:25as Democrats, cuts and the like. But the big challenge, I think, is that because it doesn't
03:31have the level of detail that a full spending bill would have, it actually gives President
03:36Trump a lot more discretion than presidents typically have to move money in this instance,
03:42in my concern, from, say, blue states to red states, from programs that Democrats want
03:47to programs that Republicans want. So it could have a multi-billion dollar impact on that
03:52front. And then the last point is, I don't really know that it would have given Doge,
04:00Musk or Trump any more power to do more than what they've been doing already as far as
04:05the assault on government employees. And the important caveat on that front is we're
04:10winning very well in the courts right now. I think over 120 suits have been filed. There's
04:15about 40 injunctions that are in place. The vast majority, I think all but maybe three
04:20or four, are ruling in favor of the government employees and either freezing the termination
04:27of these employees and in some instances ordering the Trump administration to reinstate them.
04:33So I don't know that a government shutdown would have changed those rights. In fact,
04:38I think those legal rights stay in place even when there is a government shutdown. And those
04:43are the legal rights that the courts are using to force the Trump administration to reinstate
04:47these employees. So I disagreed with Senator Schumer's analysis. But at the end of the
04:53day, you know, we can have reasonable disagreements on that front. Just tell us upfront, you know,
04:59if you want to take a different direction, don't wait until all these folks have cast
05:03these votes on the House side. These were very tough votes for some of our House Democratic
05:07members. Don't change your mind after the vote's been cast. Do it up front. Move in
05:12coordination. Make sure there's communication between yourself, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries.
05:20And I think we'll avoid these kinds of missteps in the future.
05:25And that's a really interesting point, because you've said before you believe Hakeem Jeffries
05:30met the moment you believe Senator Schumer did not. And as you mentioned, you know, Democrats
05:35have a disadvantage right now in the House and Senate. And this was one of the areas
05:39that they could have flexed their muscle here and used this as leverage. And because the
05:43government shut didn't shut down, that opportunity was lost. So I know that you received some
05:49applause when you floated the idea of Senate Democrats getting new leadership. Hakeem Jeffries
05:55said that next question when asked about the leadership there, he eventually did say this
06:00week that he believes Schumer should remain leader. What do you think? If you don't think
06:05if you think that there needs to be new leadership in Senate Democrats, who do you think meets
06:10the moment there? Well, I'm in the House. That would be up to the senators to make that
06:16decision. But the bottom line for me is not so much who the Democratic leader is. It's
06:21what he or she does. And so, you know, Chuck Schumer, outstanding public servant. He's
06:27had a long and great career. I'm not necessarily trying to force him out personally. This this
06:32isn't a personal, you know, vendetta against him. It is a request, really a demand, I think,
06:38to be reasonable about it and honest about it. Be act in coordination with your House
06:43Democratic colleagues. You know, don't don't pull the rug out from under us like that.
06:48And I do think his analysis was wrong. So I disagree on that front. But at a minimum,
06:53we should be able to make sure we're moving forward in a coordinated way. And that just
06:58takes basic communication to do it. I think that's a really interesting point, once again,
07:04because ever since November, really, there have been headlines, Democrats in disarray.
07:07Do the Democrats have an identity crisis? How do Democrats move forward? Is it going
07:12more progressive? Is it going more towards the center? What is that unified message you
07:17want to see going forward between the House, between the Senate? Yeah, I mean, the irony
07:22there is that, you know, if you look at the House vote, as we just discussed a minute
07:27ago, we had liberal House Democrats, conservative House Democrats and everybody in between all
07:34moving together in lockstep. So, you know, Democrats in disarray that that's not the
07:39description that fits what happened last Tuesday with what Hakeem Jeffries did. The
07:45problem was really that the Senate, really, Senator Schumer decided to move in a different
07:50direction sort of at the 11th hour and after House Democrats had already cast their vote.
07:56So and from a messaging standpoint, I think everybody's on the same page there. You know,
08:03the things that the Trump administration is doing, I think everybody disagrees with and
08:07not just Democrats. You know, House Republicans are starting to get earfuls when they go home
08:13and talk to their constituents, too, because he's talking about cutting Medicaid, which,
08:20you know, you know, tens of millions of people in the United States rely on Medicaid, including
08:25in red states, including in rural areas. There are rural hospitals that might have to shut
08:30down based on those kinds of cuts. There are children and seniors who are not going to
08:34get medical coverage based on the cuts they're proposing. And the cuts they're proposing
08:39are nine hundred billion dollars or so, plus or minus. So that's very significant. There's
08:45also concerns coming out of red states as well about these government employee cuts.
08:51Most of the government employees are across the country. Eighty percent are outside the
08:55Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. And so there are people in states all over that are
09:01now. Oh, what do you mean? My park's going to have to shut down. What do you mean? My
09:05local Social Security office isn't going to be able to open or have reasonable hours.
09:10What do you mean? My Veterans Affairs office or my V.A. hospital might have reduced hours.
09:15They're starting to see those kinds of impacts. They're starting to get concerned. And that's
09:20why they're starting to voice those concerns to Republicans in the House and the Senate.
09:25And that's why the House has stopped having town hall meetings. At least the House Republicans
09:32have been you know, it's been suggested by the leadership to not have town hall meetings
09:36anymore so that they can avoid that sort of pushback. And to your point, you're saying,
09:41hey, all of the House Democrats, aside from one progressive moderate centrist, everyone in
09:46between, we voted in lockstep. We're good. I'm curious what you think about the future of the
09:52Democratic Party and its favorability, because a new poll says that the favorability of the left
09:58had an all time historic low at twenty seven percent. What's the future of the Democratic
10:03Party, especially when you're thinking about midterms in less than two years? How do you
10:07write that ship? Well, if you look at the comparisons and remember, these are just
10:13generic polls. Democrats are actually polling ahead of Republicans in generic polls that I've
10:18seen, especially with respect to the House of Representatives. And Trump is underwater already.
10:24You know, his honeymoon is over basically because people are saying the crazy things he's doing,
10:29say, with tariffs, for example, totally erratic, totally damaging. He promised he was going to help
10:35people put money in their pockets, help them economically. But these tariffs he's talking
10:40about would do the exact opposite. And we just talked about what the Medicaid impact could be,
10:45especially on low income and working class families. So I think we're actually going to
10:49fare pretty well if we stay on this track and if he continues to do these, you know, kind of crazy
10:56policies. And I think in addition to that, the Democrats are going to start pushing out
11:02alternatives to the stuff he's talking about. So, you know, we've got to move away from the
11:06government of chaos and revenge, which is what he's been doing and a lot of the steps he's taken.
11:14And talk again about, well, what's going to help the regular people here in the United States?
11:18How are we going to help everyday people get more money in their pockets,
11:21keep a roof over their heads, pay for gas and groceries and bring those prices down and get
11:27more jobs back in their communities? That's what people want us to focus on. That's not what he's
11:33been doing, sadly. But I think if if we stay on this track, we'll take the House back and we'll
11:39be back in the majority again come to 2026. Congressman, per usual, I appreciate our
11:46conversations. I appreciate your perspective, as always. You're welcome back anytime.
11:50Thanks for having me. And you have a great one. We appreciate the great work that you all do.