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Democrats held the Senate floor through the night this week in a painstaking but ultimately futile protest against President Donald Trump’s budget chief.
They’re about to get some real leverage.
Elon Musk’s dramatic reshaping of government, combined with Trump’s torrent of executive actions and a confusing federal spending freeze, have cast serious doubt on the prospects for Congress to fund the government past March 14, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Democratic senators and several worried Republicans.
Republicans will need Democratic votes in the Senate and the House to avoid a government shutdown and a debt default later this year, given the GOP’s narrow majorities in both chambers. Democrats say they see little rationale now to try to compromise with Republicans who have shown little interest in stopping Trump’s aggressive use of executive power.
“It feels impossible,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Semafor. “What’s the point of writing a budget if the president’s going to ignore it? It’s a problem without precedent.”
Democrats want assurances from Trump’s White House that any government funding deal would actually be implemented — a guarantee doesn’t seem to be coming, as Musk continues his spending scrutiny and the legally disputed budget freeze lingers. Russ Vought, the conservative nemesis of many Democrats, will soon run Trump’s budget office, another hurdle for a bipartisan funding pact.
House and Senate Democrats got a taste of their future challenges in December, when Trump scuttled a bipartisan government funding accord. The two parties cut a bare-bones agreement to avoid a shutdown, but there’s little evidence of tangible progress since then.
And Democrats say they are in no mood to deal.
“This president is in this big power grab, saying that he can decide what to spend or not spend on anything. It kinda reduces your motivation to negotiate on stuff,” said Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn.
Figuring out how to avoid a shutdown, she added, is “on them now,” referring to Republicans.
Ultimately, Democrats will have few good options if they opt out of negotiations on a spending deal that the administration might not make good on. They could support a “continuing resolution” stopgap bill, though that could eventually trigger a blunt defense cut thanks to a previous bipartisan agreement.
Or Democrats could refuse to supply the votes to fund the government — which would be atypical for the party that typically tries to pin shutdowns on the GOP. Republicans are optimistic that those two bad options will force Democrats to the table.
“Look at what the alternative is. It’s either a year-long CR — which would still have to pass and get 60 votes and would create enormous problems and would trigger the sequester — or having the government shut down,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Appropriations Committee chair.
“The Democrats will be responsible for that, if they aren’t cooperating,” she added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t see it that way. He reframed the question as one for Republicans, who struggle to cobble together votes to avoid a shutdown or lift the debt ceiling: “They’re in charge, they have to work with us.”
Still, several senior Democratic sources said the conditions for a real shutdown fight are starting to manifest in the halls of the Capitol. Collins is talking to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., her counterpart on spending, but Murray said she’s “deeply worried” about the situation.
Shutdown talk in Washington is now baked into the news ecosystem, and the last one was a record-breaker from Trump’s first term. Some Democrats say they are more worried than usual this time.
“Because there’s so little dialog and communication,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the minority whip.
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Democrats will have another opportunity to push for their priorities when the debt ceiling is set to expire, a point that’s likely a few months away.
“Normally, in order for us to address the debt limit, we have to pay bribes to the Democrats in terms of more spending,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
Kennedy said that Republicans will need to figure out a strategy between government funding and the debt by working with Trump. He predicted: “That’s going to be a lively discussion.”
Murphy said Democrats should dig in on the borrowing limit, too, given Republicans’ plans to cut taxes later this year.
“We should not be increasing the debt ceiling to help them pass a billionaire and corporate tax cut,” Murphy said, adding that the near-term crisis of government funding makes it “tougher” to find a clear-cut strategy.
Both parties have used government funding deadlines as leverage, occasionally tipping the US into a shutdown. Democrats themselves briefly shut the government down in early 2018 to force a debate on immigration, though everyone forgot about that quickly after Trump’s historically long partial shutdown over border wall funding.
The circumstances are somewhat similar now; Democrats don’t want to fund his priorities, not to mention that they don’t trust the GOP to fund theirs, even if they are written into law.
“We reach a deal on programs and what will be funded. And then the president undoes the deal and violates the law in doing so? That makes it impossible to have agreements. Obviously, this is a serious constitutional crisis,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. “There’s no business as usual.”
Burgess’s view
Democrats’ activist base has woken up. Lawmakers are now rallying at government agencies and holding the Senate floor overnight. Does that mean a party whose identity is significantly more pro-government than the GOP is ready to shut down the government in protest?
I’m not so sure.
Still, shutdown fights often seem solvable, until they aren’t. And if Democrats keep feeling ignored by Republicans amid pressure from progressives to fight, don’t be surprised if things get even uglier come mid-March.
Room for Disagreement
The March 14 deadline is pretty far away, relatively speaking. Congress has written and passed entire, massive bills in that timeframe — and many Republicans say it’s too early to get worried about Democrats’ positioning.
“We’re five weeks away from that. That’s like an eternity in this place,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Congress will “get it done” and that he’s “going to make sure the government stays open.”