Senate Democrats balk at funding extension, raising the risk of a shutdown

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats said Wednesday that they would refuse to back a Republican-written stopgap bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, significantly raising the chances of a government shutdown at the end of the week.

After two days of intense closed-door party meetings, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., emerged to say that members of his party could not support the bill approved by the House on Tuesday to keep most federal funding flowing at current levels for the next six months. He instead urged Republicans to pass a monthlong extension to allow time for Congress to consider individual spending bills and reach a compromise that both parties could accept.

“Our caucus is unified” on such a measure to “keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer said in a brief statement from the floor.

The announcement left congressional leaders without a clear path to avert a shutdown that would begin at 12:01 a.m. Saturday should Congress fail to act by then to extend federal funding. Senate Republicans would need the support of at least eight Democrats to overcome procedural hurdles and bring a spending measure to a final vote. Just one, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, has so far declared he would vote to break any filibuster.

The standoff puts Senate Democrats at risk of being blamed for any shutdown even as they complain about Trump administration disruptions to federal agencies. But they are under pressure from House Democrats and activists to stand against Trump and Elon Musk as they lead an effort to dismantle broad swaths of the federal bureaucracy, in some cases in direct defiance of Congress, which holds the power of the purse.

With two days left before the shutdown deadline, there is still time for a reversal by Democrats. But most of them have heaped criticism on Republicans’ stopgap spending measure, arguing that it would give Trump and Musk too much leeway to continue their unilateral efforts to slash government employees and programs.

Republicans, who control both chambers, have shown no willingness to compromise with Democrats on the spending measure. And even if they agreed to, changing the House bill or approving a different one would require the House to return and vote again, which is highly unlikely. Republican leaders deliberately adjourned the chamber Tuesday night and left town after passing the spending legislation, known as a continuing resolution, to effectively force the Senate to accept it.

The private meetings this week have laid bare a major dilemma for Democrats as they wrestle with how to respond to the Republican legislation. Senators said they had two unappealing alternatives. They could oppose the GOP plan and potentially take the blame for a damaging federal shutdown or surrender to Trump and incite the wrath of Democrats demanding that their representatives thwart the White House at every turn.

“There are really only two options,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats. “One is to vote for a pretty bad CR, or the other is to vote for a potentially even worse shutdown. It is a very tough choice.”

Even as Schumer declared his party’s opposition, Democrats privately continued to deliberate over a way to avoid a shutdown without appearing to capitulate to Trump. Some suggested allowing the stopgap spending bill to move forward as long as Republicans agreed to give them a chance to revise it on the Senate floor. That would afford Democrats the chance to make their political case against the measure and show that they were fighting it, even if their proposals for changes ultimately failed.

But as House Democratic leaders gathered for a retreat in Virginia on Wednesday, they pleaded with their Senate counterparts to follow their lead and oppose the government funding bill outright.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the minority leader, called the measure “a power grab that further unleashes and entrenches Elon Musk’s efforts.” He applauded his caucus for sticking together Tuesday in voting against it and sending a clear message of repudiation for its policies on the House floor. All but one Democrat opposed the measure in the House.

In the Senate, virtually all Democrats are opposed to the stopgap bill, which cleared the House largely along party lines Tuesday. They view it as an abdication of congressional power and a woefully inefficient way of funding the government while providing Trump and Musk more opportunity to slice into federal agencies. They also noted that it broke from an earlier bipartisan deal on both domestic and military spending.

“Instead of writing a bill that gives our communities what they need, they wrote a bill that turns many of our accounts into slush funds,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. The bill, she added, “gives the final say over what gets funding to two billionaires who don’t know the first thing about the needs of our working families.”

She and her fellow Senate Democrats would much prefer to pass the individual spending bills that have been negotiated between the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Appropriations Committees. But House Republicans pulled back from those talks in favor of the decision to freeze most funding through Sept. 30, leaving only two remaining possibilities: blocking the spending bill or approving it.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Democrats should not give in “just because the House decided to leave town on a Tuesday night.”

“That doesn’t mean the Senate shouldn’t be a deliberative body,” he added.

Despite their opposition to the spending plan, top Democrats are leery of forcing the government into a shutdown, fearing the political blowback after years of castigating Republicans for shutdowns.

In addition, Democrats worried that a shutdown would play into the hands of Trump and Musk, empowering them to keep hollowing out federal agencies. Democrats also argued that it remained unclear how any shutdown would end once it began. And they conceded that it could undercut their criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency as an out-of-control buzz saw shredding the government, if they were the ones refusing to extend funding for federal agencies.

Republicans were already trying to take advantage of their predicament.

“If I listen to our colleagues across the aisle, they claim to have a lot of concern for the federal workers that depend on government funding,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “So I find interesting that so many of them in the House cast a vote that would put thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of federal workers out of work.”

Relenting to Republicans was certain to inflame House Democrats and advocacy groups who were demanding that Senate Democrats remain united against the legislation.

More than 150 progressive and environmental groups Wednesday sent Senate Democratic leaders a letter urging them to “stand strong until Musk and Trump stop their illegal actions to dismantle key federal programs.”

At least one Democrat said causing a shutdown would clear the way for additional harm.

“If any of those groups want to shut the government down, I would disagree with them,” Fetterman said. “It wasn’t that long ago that we were lecturing Republicans who were threatening to shut the government down. Now I think we are in the same situation.”

Democrats have excoriated Republicans, saying they acted irresponsibly in shuttering federal agencies in past funding fights.

Schumer and his fellow Democrats did prompt a shutdown in 2018 as they sought to win protections for immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children. But they capitulated after a brief weekend closure, when lawmakers concluded that the strategy was backfiring and angering the public.

They have sought to make certain they were not blamed in any government funding lapses since then.

Annie Karni contributed from Leesburg, Virginia.