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WASHINGTON — With the deadline to avoid a shutdown just a little over 24 hours away, attention in the nation’s capital is fixated on Democrats in the Senate as they decide whether to get behind Republicans’ plan to keep the government funded through September or deny the GOP the necessary votes.
In a major development Thursday evening, the upper chamber’s top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said that allowing a shutdown would be worse than supporting the GOP plan, appearing to indicate he will back it.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
It comes after a number of Democrats in the upper chamber spent Thursday making clear they would not get behind Republican’s short-term funding measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR, which passed the House earlier this week and would keep the government funded through the end of the current fiscal year in September. It works off of the last CR – passed under a Senate controlled by Democrats and signed by a Democratic president – but would slash $13 billion in non-defense spending while increasing defense spending by $6 billion.
“I think it would be horrible if there was a shutdown but don’t tell me that in order to avert a shutdown, I have to give you a license to destroy the government as you’re already starting to destroy,” Sen. Corey Booker, D-N.J. told CNN.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, a first-term Democratic Senator from the battleground state of Arizona, said he is a hard-no due to cuts to veterans services.
“I know for a fact I will not vote for something that cuts veterans services and that’s what’s in that bill,” Gallego told reporters.
Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland also declared on Thursday she would not back the CR, arguing a shutdown would be the fault of the GOP.
“Republicans control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives,” Alsobrooks wrote in a statement. “Whatever happens next is squarely on them.”
Schumer’s speech on Thursday marks a sharp pivot form one he gave just the day before in which he indicated that Democrats are ready to reject the current stopgap bill from the House GOP, noting that Republicans in the Senate “do not have the votes.” He added that his party wants a different approach – a CR through April 11 that would keep the lights on for now and allow more time for Congress to work out a larger spending bill for the fiscal year.
But it’s an increasingly difficult situation for the party’s members in the upper chamber as they weigh pushing back on a funding strategy backed by President Donald Trump and the GOP with concerns over potentially being blamed for a shutdown.
The CR only received one Democratic vote in the lower chamber and House Democrats are urging their counterparts in the Senate to follow their lead and reject the measure.
“Look, I think these are two bad products, bad environments that provide more chaos and uncertainty to the American people,” Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., told CNN. “But in the end, I’m looking at which would be worse for constituents back home.”
“I haven’t made up my mind, but I think that the continuing resolution is awful," Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said.
Given their 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, Republicans need at least seven Democrats to cross the aisle to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most legislation in the Senate to get the House-passed CR across the finish line. But that number could grow if Republican senators defect and Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y. has already said he plans to vote against it.
“I’m a fiscal conservative and I won’t vote to add $2 trillion in debt for our country,” Paul told reporters on Thursday before adding that he will put forward an amendment to incorporate cuts made by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s government downsizing effort, the U.S. DOGE Service.
Trump and Republican leaders in the Hill said they want to wait to incorporate the bulk of those cuts in legislation to fund the government in the next fiscal year, 2026.
Only one Democratic senator, John Fetterman of battleground Pennsylvania, has said publicly that they are willing to back the CR to avoid a shutdown while a number of others are not saying how they plan to vote.
“For me, I’d never vote to shut the government down,” Fetterman told reporters, warning it would risk “slipping us into a recession.”
Trump on Thursday told reporters in the Oval Office that Democrats would be blamed for a shutdown if one occurred at this point while Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, predicted that his colleagues across the aisle would “cave.”
“I think cooler heads will prevail and I don’t think we’ll see a shutdown,” he added.
