At the end of this week, Senate Democrats may force a partial government shutdown rather than allow a final vote on a GOP-backed stopgap bill that already has passed the House.
Republicans are warning of a “Schumer Shutdown,” named after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who said on Wednesday that the Senate majority lacks the votes necessary to break the filibuster on the GOP’s continuing resolution and should take up the Democrats’ one-month funding patch instead.
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort but Republicans chose a partisan path drafting their continuing without any input — any input — from congressional Democrats,” Schumer declared on the Senate floor. “Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that.”
A partial government shutdown, in which non-essential federal employees will be furloughed, is set to begin on March 15 if a funding bill is not passed in time. It was only months ago, in December, that lawmakers resorted to the last continuing resolution that extended funding through mid-March.
The GOP-led House passed a 99-page continuing resolution, which provides funds to various federal agencies and programs through September 30, via a 217-213 vote on Tuesday. All but one Republican and a single Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) — supported the measure. The rest of the Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) opposed the bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) took the first procedural step in moving ahead with the House-passed funding bill on Wednesday morning, according to C-SPAN’s Craig Caplan. A three-fifths majority — or 60 votes — will be needed to overcome a filibuster prior to a final vote in which the bill will need only a simple majority to prevail.
As it stands, Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so a bipartisan coalition will have to vote in favor of advancing the legislation to clear the procedural hurdle. Punchbowl News reported there could be some kind of agreement in which a sufficient number of Democrats support cloture in exchange for the GOP majority allowing a vote on their 30-day continuing resolution.
Republicans have already pinned a potential shutdown on Schumer, arguing the Democrat leader opposes their legislation only because he does not to side with President Donald Trump — who supports the GOP’s continuing resolution as a means to keep the government running and later get to his domestic agenda priorities in national defense, border security, and tax cuts.
“The most unbelievable part of a Schumer shutdown is that it has no purpose. There is no goal other than opposing Trump,” said the Senate GOP account on X. “Americans shouldn’t have to pay the price for Schumer’s tantrum.”
Also on X, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) posted a “SchumerShutdown” hashtag and said, “The only reason we’re voting on a CR is because Senator Schumer refused to put the normal appropriations bills on the floor for a vote last year. Now they want another short term bill? Nope.”
It remains to be seen whether all the Democrats and the independents who caucus with them will band together against the Republicans’ continuing resolution. At least one of them — Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) — has indicated that he will break ranks.
“The weeks of performative ‘resistance’ from those in my party were limited to undignified antics,” Fetterman said on X. “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.”
On the GOP side, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) signaled that he will vote against the continuing resolution — although that does not necessarily mean he will oppose breaking the filibuster.
“Despite [DOGE’s] findings of loony left-wing USAID programs, the Republican spending bill continues to fund the very foreign aid [Elon Musk] proposes to cut! The bill continues spending at the inflated pandemic levels and will add $2T to the debt this year,” Paul said in a post on X, referring to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) overseen by Elon Musk. “Count me as a hell no!”
