The federal government is set to shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday unless lawmakers pass a bill to keep it open. Senate Republicans are likely to need eight Democrats to join them in order to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, and only one Democrat aside from Schumer has publicly said he will support the bill.
Other Democrats fear that a government shutdown would empower Trump and Musk to make further cuts by giving Trump the power to determine which government employees are “essential” and must keep working during a shutdown and which are “nonessential.”
Schumer warned his caucus there would be no “off-ramp” for Democrats if they allowed the government to shut down, given Republicans control both chambers of Congress, he told reporters. He also said the closure could drag on for “months and months.”
“I think they want to use the shutdown to decimate the federal government,” he said of Republicans.
Many Senate Democrats announced Thursday that they will not support the bill. “I think when you confront a bully, you have to confront a bully, and I’m not going to vote for this,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (New Mexico). “But I fully respect people who’ve come to a different conclusion.”
With the clock ticking, and as more Democrats came out against the funding bill, Schumer spent Thursday meeting one-on-one with his members to gauge their support for averting a shutdown, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.
Some Democrats have criticized that amendment plan.
“It’s really all about pandering to the base,” Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), the only Democrat other than Schumer who has said he’ll vote for the Republican bill, said in an interview Thursday morning.
The Republican funding bill includes $13 billion in cuts to nondefense spending that Democrats have criticized, including cuts to international peacekeeping, mental health and substance abuse treatment and workforce training, among other programs. It would also trigger an immediate $1.1 billion cut to D.C.’s budget because Republicans left out language typically included in such bills.
Instead, he told lawmakers that they should be proud of rejecting the bill almost unanimously. He mentioned the upcoming Senate vote, drawing several loud boos. And he said Martin Luther King Jr. once remarked “that although everyone may not see it at the moment, the time is always right to do what’s right,” according to the people in the room.
Republicans argued before Schumer’s remarks that Democrats would be blamed for any shutdown.
Trump echoed Senate Republicans in remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday. “If there’s a shutdown, it’s only because of the Democrats,” he said.
But some Democrats have argued that Republicans would get the blame.
The GOP controls the White House, the Senate and the House. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that 32 percent of registered voters would blame Democrats in Congress for a shutdown, 31 percent would blame Republicans in Congress and 22 percent would blame Trump.
“Republicans didn’t do their work,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), an Appropriations Committee member, told reporters, previewing the party’s argument if the government shuts down. “They have an obligation to work with Democrats, and instead they put a partisan [continuing resolution] on the floor.”
Despite his criticisms of Democrats’ amendment plan , Fetterman said before Schumer’s remarks that he recognized that Schumer was caught between the anger of the Democratic base and the desire to prevent a shutdown that Democrats might be blamed for.
