While Connecticut families suffer under a grinding government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has the audacity to say “every day gets better for us” (meaning the Democrats). Better for whom? Certainly not for the thousands of federal workers in our state going without pay. Not for the veterans losing access to services. Not for the small businesses watching contracts evaporate, not for those who need help putting food on their tables. Schumer’s comment is a slap in the face to every American caught in the crossfire of Washington’s dysfunction.
Connecticut’s own Senators, Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal, have long positioned themselves as champions of working families and defenders of decency in politics. It’s time for Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal to show some backbone. They must publicly condemn Schumer’s grotesque celebration of political leverage and demand an immediate vote on a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government. No policy riders. No partisan brinkmanship. Just a simple vote to end the pain.
Murphy tried to spin Schumer’s remarks as a defense of health care policy. That’s not leadership, it’s deflection. Blumenthal, our normally boisterous senior senator, has remained silent. Silence in the face of suffering is complicity. Connecticut voters deserve to know whether their senior senator believes that political leverage is worth the cost of missed paychecks and shuttered services.
Connecticut deserves senators who fight for people, not party. Every day this shutdown continues, families fall further behind. Paychecks are missed. Childcare is disrupted. Food assistance is delayed. And yet, Schumer thinks Democrats are winning. What Chuck Schumer and the Democrats fail to understand is that while they celebrate their so-called “win”, Connecticut and America are losing.
Murphy and Blumenthal must make clear to their leader, Chuck Schumer, that this is not a game; people’s lives and livelihoods are being destroyed. They must demand that Schumer stop treating the shutdown like a political asset and start treating it like the crisis it is. They must call for a clean CR—no strings attached—and pressure their colleagues to pass it immediately.
We understand that Democrats have policy priorities they want to debate—but that can’t come at the expense of working families. The clean continuing resolution on the table maintains funding levels Democrats already supported under President Biden. Passing it now would allow our friends and neighbors in federal service—and the private contractors who support them—to pay their Eversource and UI bills, cover rent and mortgages, keep insurance active, and put food on the table. It would restore access to health care for our veterans, end the fear of eviction and utility shutoffs for struggling families, and ensure that the brave men and women in our military, TSA, air traffic control, and federal law enforcement are finally paid for the work they’re doing right now without a paycheck. The time for political posturing is over.
Senators Murphy and Blumenthal, go to the Senate floor, stand up, be Connecticut, and America’s voice, and urge your colleagues to follow your lead and vote to pass the CR.
Senator Murphy, you clearly want to lead the Democrat Party. Show us you have the fortitude to lead, to do what is right for Connecticut and America, and end this sham fiasco today.
Your actions beg the question: if you are willing to let the people you allegedly represent suffer, who are you actually representing?
Connecticut is watching. America is watching. History will remember who stood up and, more importantly, who sat on their hands, in this time of crisis.
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Ben Proto is chair of the Connecticut Republican Party