Jeffries backs Schumer's leadership as Democrats seek to leave spending conflict behind

The top two Democrats in Congress are moving on from a bicameral dispute over a GOP government funding bill and readying for the next big fight against the Republican agenda.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday said he has confidence in his Senate counterpart and fellow New York Democrat Charles E. Schumer after declining to endorse his leadership last week.

“Yes, I do,” Mr. Jeffries said at a press conference in Brooklyn when asked if he supports Mr. Schumer’s leadership of the Senate.

Mr. Schumer, meanwhile, appeared on “CBS Mornings” and ABC’s “The View” and reiterated he plans to remain in leadership despite liberal groups like Indivisible and Sunrise Movement calling on him to resign as Senate minority leader.

“I’m the best leader for the Senate,” he said in the CBS interview.

Both press appearances were set to promote the release of his book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” but also touched on the divide among Democrats after the government funding battle. His presence came after he postponed book tour events scheduled for this week, citing “security reasons.”

Mr. Schumer was one of 10 Senate Democrats who voted to end a filibuster on the GOP spending bill, which Democrats largely opposed because it did nothing to restrain President Trump and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency from continuing to fire federal workers and gut government programs.

The Senate Democratic leader said he let the bill advance to prevent a shutdown that would have been far worse, given the power the executive branch has to deem which government employees and programs are essential. He also worried that Republicans, who control Congress and thus any off-ramp to the shutdown, wouldn’t compromise on a spending agreement to reopen the government.

“One of the Republican senators who knows said to us, ’You’ll be in the shutdown for six to nine months till we totally destroy the federal government,’” Mr. Schumer said. “So the shutdown was a much worse alternative. I knew I’d get a lot of flak. I took some bullets.”

Some of those bullets came from House Democrats, who had united — save for one member — against the GOP’s six-month stopgap funding bill.

Mr. Jeffries said House Democrats stand by their decision to oppose a bill they felt would “hurt families, hurt veterans and hurt seniors.” Their strategy, he said, was to vote it down and force Republicans to explain why they wouldn’t accept a four-week stopgap to buy more time to negotiate a bipartisan spending deal.

“It was the Republicans’ choice in our view to potentially shut down the government, and they would have to explain that to the American people,” he said.

Mr. Schumer acknowledged he and Mr. Jeffries initially agreed on the strategy to push the four-week stopgap. But once Senate Republicans rejected that, the senator decided it was in the party and country’s best interest to avert a shutdown to avoid giving Mr. Trump and DOGE more power to slash government agencies.

“I thought I did the thing a leader should do,” Mr. Schumer said. “Even when people don’t see the danger around the curve, my job was to alert people to it.”

Mr. Jeffries declined to say on Tuesday whether he now understood the rationale behind Mr. Schumer’s decision. But his responses toward his New York colleague were much friendlier than on Friday when he repeatedly refused to say whether he still had confidence in Mr. Schumer. The congressman’s curt responses, like “next question,” even showed disdain last week.

Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Schumer met Sunday in Brooklyn, where they both live, and appear to have buried the hatchet.

“We had a good conversation about the path forward, particularly as it relates to making sure we all speak with one voice in the effort to stop these Medicaid cuts from ever being enacted into law,” Mr. Jeffries said.

His comments came Tuesday at a press conference for Democrats’ Medicaid day of action, a messaging effort to attack what they say are Republican plans to cut the government health insurance program to help pay for sweeping tax cuts.

Mr. Jeffries was asked if he has urged other House Democrats who have spoken out against Mr. Schumer, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, to align with him and Senate Democrats. He didn’t say whether he’d spoken to them but suggested Democrats are unified around the issues that matter to the party.

“We’re all aligned on the fights that are in front of us on behalf of the people that we represent,” he said, noting Democrats’ top focus is on saving Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare from the GOP’s “chainsaw.”

Republicans have said they’re not targeting benefits for any of those three programs but are looking at ways to cut out waste, fraud and abuse. A House GOP budget blueprint for enacting Mr. Trump’s agenda calls for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to find $880 billion in savings.

Democrats will have less power in Congress to thwart any potential Medicaid cuts because Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to pass their agenda without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate.

But Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Schumer are hoping the party’s messaging efforts will help drive enough public opposition to the potential Medicaid cuts to get Republicans to reverse course on their own.

“We’re going to do this day in, day out on issues,” Mr. Schumer said, describing plans to also attack Mr. Trump and Republicans on other economic issues like tariffs that will raise costs for consumers.

“If we keep at it every day, relentless fighting and showing how they’re hurting people so badly, Trump’s numbers will get much lower, and his popularity but also his effectiveness will decline,” he said. “I believe that strategy will work.”