It's showdown time. Gee...for some reason I wish we had someone other than the Turtle as head of the Senate.
Schumer headed for epic clash with McConnell...Schumer wasn’t kidding about laying it all out in the open. The Democratic leader is now predicting victory over McConnell in two partisan confrontations about to come to a head, over the Supreme Court vacancy and a potential government shutdown. Never mind that the Democratic Party is in its weakest state in more than a decade.
“They’re in charge. Government shuts down, it's on their back. We have leverage,” Schumer said in a lengthy interview in his Capitol suite, the same spot where Reid held court with reporters. If Democrats block Neil Gorsuch and McConnell kills the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, “the onus is on them.”
The Democratic leader from New York has been in the job less than three months — and largely relegated to the sidelines. Republicans have pursued an almost entirely partisan agenda, but will need Democratic votes to fund the government and — short of invoking the so-called nuclear option — confirm Gorsuch.
If Schumer emerged from the election in an accommodating mood, those days appear long gone. The New Yorker made clear he’s itching for a fight. It’s a high-risk, high-reward play: Prevail and he’ll open his tenure as leader showing he can take on President Donald Trump and win. Lose, and the bravado looks like a lot of talk.
Democrats notched a huge win last week when the Republican Obamacare repeal effort crashed and burned in the House. Though Schumer was largely a bystander in the GOP's partisan process, he called it the “most consequential” moment of his young tenure and kept his party from working with Republicans....
...The trial by fire will begin next month, as negotiations to fund the government past April 28 begin in earnest and McConnell seeks to jam through Gorsuch’s nomination in a fight that could end the filibuster for high court nominees.
Schumer is confident he can block McConnell from filling a Supreme Court vacancy by clearing the 60-vote threshold — and that McConnell might not have the votes to gut the filibuster to get Gorsuch through.
"There’s been an almost seismic shift in the caucus,” against Gorsuch, Schumer said. As for McConnell changing the rules in response, the minority leader added: “I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. … There are people in his caucus who really don’t want to change the rules, OK?”
Schumer also insists he has the “upper hand” in negotiations to keep the government open, reasoning that Republicans will get blamed for a shutdown even if it’s Democrats who vote down a spending bill because it contains funding for the border wall....
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/schumer-mcconnell-senate-leaders-236479
