Is the Shutdown Off? | Power Line

Senate Democrats have been vowing to filibuster the continuing budget resolution that passed the House, and thus shut down the government. They don’t like the CR because it increases defense spending and cuts other spending, thus validating a large number of DOGE cuts. Plus, it was drafted by Republicans.

But now the winds may be shifting. The Hill reports that Chuck Schumer may have been bluffing to pacify his party’s base:

Senate Democrats say privately that they will not allow the government to shut down Saturday, despite growing pressure from activists and liberal lawmakers who want them to kill a GOP-crafted six-month stopgap spending bill.

Senate Democratic sources say Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is giving plenty of room to centrists in his caucus to vote for the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) if doing so is the only way to avoid a government shutdown at week’s end.

And one Democratic senator familiar with the internal deliberations said Senate Democrats will ultimately vote to keep the government open, despite the rumblings of liberals within their caucus who are heaping scorn on the House-passed funding bill.

The Hill considers senators like Jon Ossoff and Mark Warner to be “centrists.”

“What’s going on is that Murray and Merkley are pressing very hard for a 30-day CR and Schumer is pressing a different direction. He wants to provide the votes and let this thing pass. He’s very concerned about a shutdown,” said a second Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss the dynamics within the Democratic caucus before it met for lunch Wednesday to debate strategy.

The 30-day idea is to bargain for a 30-day CR that continues spending at current levels, rather than cutting it, apparently to give Democrats more time to negotiate and, perhaps, hope for a political deus ex machina. The debate within the Democratic caucus has gotten heated:

Democrats battled over strategy for more than an hour in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Room located just off the Senate floor. The discussion grew so passionate that some senators could be heard shouting through the door.

Schumer is, at least on paper, giving in to the extremists in his caucus:

Schumer gave ground to liberal colleagues by announcing after the Democratic lunch that he and his colleagues would insist on a vote on the 30-day CR introduced by Murray.

He vowed that Democrats would block the House-passed government funding bill unless they got a chance to vote on Murray’s bill.

That vote, of course, will fail, so the 30-day option is entirely symbolic.

But that bill is expected to fail, and when it does, at least eight Democrats are expected to then vote for the House-passed bill, which President Trump has indicated he would sign into law.

There are issues related to timing as the clock ticks down to a Saturday shutdown:

Senate Republicans point out that the House has adjourned for the week and has no plans to return before government funding lapses March 14. They argue that even if the Senate passes a 30-day CR, there’s no clear indication the House would reconvene in the next few days to pass it. And they warn there’s not assurance that Trump would sign the Democratic-drafted measure into law.

“I think that ship has sailed,” one Senate Republican aide said of the prospect of 13 Republican senators voting for a 30-day CR.

It appears, for now at least, that the Democrats have huffed and puffed, but don’t actually intend to shut down the government. Which I wouldn’t have minded at all.