WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are facing a difficult decision whether to hold their nose and vote for Republican legislation that would empower President Donald Trump’s administration to continue slashing federal agencies or risk a costly government shutdown later this week.
The vexing question for the party comes amid pressure from their liberal base that is pushing for tougher resistance to Trump and one of his closest advisers, Elon Musk. The tech billionaire has spearheaded efforts to freeze spending and downsize the federal workforce despite lacking congressional approval, angering civil servants and creating chaos across the government.
At the same time, if enough Democratic senators do not support the House legislation, government funding will almost certainly lapse on Friday at midnight, disrupting government services and resulting in furloughs of federal employees. There’s no telling how long such a shutdown would last since the House recessed on Tuesday and isn’t expected to return until March 24, putting even more pressure on Democrats.
“We’re choosing between awful and terrible,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) acknowledged to reporters on Tuesday.
The six-month funding package, which narrowly passed in the House by 217-213 on Tuesday, largely continues spending at current levels. It would boost defense spending by $6 billion and cut nondefense spending by $13 billion.
More importantly, Democrats noted, it would allow Trump and Musk to spend or shut off funding for programs as they see fit because it lacks critical language that is contained in regular full-year negotiated bills that would make it easier for their party to put a check on the president in court.
“Instead of working with Democrats to invest in working families and communities all across America, Speaker Johnson has rolled out a slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending — and more power to pick winners and losers, which threatens families in blue and red states alike,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
Vice President JD Vance appeared to acknowledge the spending flexibility in the bill in a private meeting of House Republicans earlier on Tuesday morning, where he urged them to support it because Trump will “ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer,” according to NOTUS.
Democratic senators on Tuesday debated for nearly two hours at a tense closed-door lunch about their best course of action, but they emerged with no clear consensus on the path forward.
“We’re going to wait and see what the House does,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters afterward.
Since Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is expected to oppose the bill, Republicans will need at least eight Democratic senators to cross the aisle and support the measure to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to avoid a filibuster. They can count Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) as one of them.
“I’m not going to vote to shut the government down,” Fetterman told reporters on Tuesday, warning that a government shutdown “will impact and punish millions and millions of Americans.“
“If they want to do that, that’s on them, but I’m not going to be a part of it,” he added.
At least a handful of other Democratic senators appeared to be undecided.
“I’m going to wait to make a decision and assess what’s best for Arizona,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who faces a potentially tough reelection next year, said a shutdown is “not in our nation’s interests” but did not say how he’d vote on the Republican bill.
And Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Republicans could make a government shutdown more painful than normal and “use it to expand the president’s power, even beyond what they’re already considering.”
“It’s a very tough choice,” he added.
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of Schumer’s leadership team, urged Democrats to oppose the bill because it would give Trump more power to spend as he sees fit, rather than as Congress had appropriated.
“The Republican shutdown playbook is dangerous, and it will hurt working families,” Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Democrats are right to oppose the House bill. And people all across this country are right to expect us to stand up and fight back.”
