Faced with the agonizing decision of whether to allow the government to shut down or help pass a House-approved Republican spending bill they have criticized, Senate Democrats are making a longshot play to open up a third path: a 30-day spending patch that would buy time for bipartisan negotiations on spending bills.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York announced Wednesday that Democrats would block the House Republican continuing resolution (CR) funding the government through the end of September and instead look to advance a stopgap measure to keep federal agencies funded through April 11.
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input — any input — from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Because of that, Republican do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR.”
Democrats are reportedly pressing Republican leaders to allow an amendment vote on their proposal.
With two days left until the midnight Friday deadline — and with House lawmakers gone until after next week — the Senate Democrats’ choice leaves it unclear whether Congress can avert a shutdown. Republicans need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, meaning that they would likely need at least eight Democrats to support a procedural vote.
Schumer said his caucus is unified around the short-term spending bill, despite some very public comments from several Democratic senators indicating extreme discomfort with or opposition to a shutdown.
“Voting to shut the government down will punish millions or risk a recession. I disagree with many points in the CR, but I will never vote to shut our government down,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said in a social media post.
Some in the party fear that they would bear the blame for any shutdown or that allowing the lights to go out at federal agencies would play into the efforts by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to dramatically scale back the size of government. But Democrats also worry that approving the Republican-passed bill will set a bad precedent, give Trump and Musk too much power over spending decisions and erode Congress’s power of the purse.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly has said he won't support a 30-day funding bill.
“I think anything else they put out there is a smoke screen, because at this point, there’s really one solution on the table that keeps the government funded,” he said Tuesday, according to NBC News. But he reportedly expressed openness on Wednesday to negotiating a deal allowing Democrats amendment votes. “We’re open to those conversations and discussions. I think right now they’re still trying to figure out how they want to see this wrap up,” he said.
To vote on any bill by the Friday night deadline, all 100 senators would need to agree to speed the process, giving Democrats some leverage on their demand for amendments. Still, their 30-day plan wouldn’t pass — it would only allow Democrats to say that they tried to avoid a shutdown, even if most then oppose the House plan. Ultimately, once the House bill clears the threat of a filibuster, Republicans could pass the bill on their own with a simple majority.
The bottom line: The Democratic base may be clamoring for a showdown or a show of resistance to the Trump-Musk agenda. The shutdown fight is now a game of chicken and it’s not clear just how far Democrats will take it — or whether Schumer really has the numbers to carry out any threat, given the concerns of moderates in his caucus that a shutdown would shift the political narrative around Musk’s cuts.