After decades of condemning government shutdowns, Senate Democrats are on the verge of forcing a government shutdown on Friday to block President Trump’s agenda.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats won’t provide the needed votes to pass the GOP bill and instead want a vote on an alternative stopgap spending bill.
Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat, said the Senate is at an impasse with the House-passed bill because Republicans “do not have the votes.”
The stopgap spending bill to stop a partial federal shutdown needs Democratic votes to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to survive a filibuster. Voting for the Trump-backed bill, however, proved more than the Democrats can stomach.
Democrats also said they were outraged that the House-passed bill, which would fund the government at current levels through September, was written without input from Democrats.
Mr. Schumer called for a “clean” stopgap bill, what’s known as a continuing resolution or “CR” on Capitol Hill, that lasts until April 11.
“That will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate on bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Mr. Schumer said in a floor speech.
Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said the Democrats’ dissatisfaction with the spending plan was more basic.
“The truth is most of all our Democratic colleagues are just mad about the outcome of the Nov. 5 election,” he said.
Meanwhile, the shutdown deadline of midnight Friday is fast approaching.
What’s more, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, gaveled the House into recess until March 24. Any changes the Senate makes to the bill would require another House vote and all but guarantee a shutdown Friday.
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is the only Senate Democrat who has come out in support of the House-passed stopgap bill.
“It’s two choices, shut the government down, or just vote for a CR that you don’t agree with parts of it, just like myself,” Mr. Fetterman said. “That’s really the fundamental choice.”
He had a sharp warning for fellow Democrats.
“If they shut the government down, they’re going to own it,” he said.
It’s the same argument Senate Democrats once wielded against Republicans. When they controlled the upper chamber in the past, Democrats frequently dared Republicans to vote against stopgap bills or else take the blame for a shutdown.
Republicans hold a 53-seat majority. With GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky vowing to vote “no,” the bill will need the support of at least eight Democrats to survive.
The measure passed largely along party lines in the House.
It continues spending at levels set by the previous Congress, which Democrats had the Senate majority and President Biden was in the White House. However, the stopgap includes $13 billion in cuts to nondefense spending and a $6 billion bump to defense spending.
The CR also boosts veterans’ health care by $6 billion to avoid a costly shortfall that VA officials warned of last year, and continues the pay increase for service members passed in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act.
There’s also over $9 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a slight bump from the previous year’s spending, and more than a $500 million increase for the government’s nutritional program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC.
The six-month spending patch will clear the decks for congressional Republicans to pass Mr. Trump’s agenda, including stopping the expiration of his 2017 tax cuts.
A big sticking point for Democrats, though not part of the bill, is the cuts to agency and layoffs of federal workers spearheaded by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, warned that the GOP’s stopgap bill “may enable more firings.”
“But closing the government may be even more welcome to Elon Musk because it gives him an excuse to fire more people, and he can blame it on the Democrats,” he said. “But I’m leaning toward ’no’ on the CR because I think it creates a slush fund for Donald Trump without any real guardrails or accountability to the Congress, and we should not be ceding the power of the purse in this way.”
Democrats in both chambers wanted the bill to include restrictions on Mr. Trump’s ability to direct the funding. That demand stalled the appropriations process and led the GOP to adopt a stopgap bill that funds the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
