A person uses a mobile phone with the U.S. Capitol building in the background on Capitol Hill in Washington, on November 13, 2024.
A person uses a mobile phone with the U.S. Capitol building in the background on Capitol Hill in Washington, on November 13, 2024.
House Speaker Mike Johnson formally unveiled plans on Saturday for a government funding stopgap through September 30 — a measure intended to stave off a potential March 14 shutdown and buy time for Donald Trump and GOP leaders to steer key pieces of the president’s agenda through Congress this summer.
But Democratic leaders quickly slammed the door on supporting the measure, raising the specter of a high-stakes clash next week.
The president himself on Saturday endorsed the measure, which includes some cuts to domestic spending programs that Democrats will likely oppose. GOP leadership aides said Saturday that it would increase defense spending by about $6 billion while domestic spending would drop by about $13 billion.
And while GOP leadership aides stressed that the plan includes no partisan policy add-ons, it does include certain White House funding requests, such as some new money intended to help carry out additional deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But in an ominous sign for Congress’ ability to stave off a shutdown next week, House Democratic leaders said they plan to vote against the bill, arguing it “recklessly cuts” domestic spending programs.
“The legislation does nothing to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while exposing the American people to further pain throughout this fiscal year. We are voting No,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said in a joint statement Saturday evening.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, Senate Democrats’ top spending negotiator, also criticized the plan, saying in a statement Saturday that “Speaker Johnson has rolled out a slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending.”
Murray’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, was even more blunt, writing in a statement: “I strongly oppose this” bill.
House GOP leaders believe the plan is on track to pass the chamber, arguing that Trump’s backing will help them win robust support among House Republicans on the floor this week, even as many ultraconservatives typically loathe such stopgap measures. Johnson hopes to hold the vote Tuesday on the 99-page bill, according to people familiar with the plans.
But it remains unclear how strongly Democrats — whose voters back home are furious over Trump’s cuts to federal programs — are willing to turn next week’s funding deadline into a showdown with the president, if it risks a government shutdown that could hurt even more federal workers.
“It’s going to be a tough choice now for Democrats to decide if they want to be the ones to shut down the government,” a House GOP leadership aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told reporters Saturday. “It is quite literally as clean a CR as you can draft.”
If the short-term funding measure passes the House next week as Johnson expects, it will put immense pressure on Senate Democrats to go along with the same plan.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his leadership team have, too, said they want negotiations to continue instead of pursuing a long-term stopgap. But it’s not clear how forcefully Schumer and his team will push their Senate Democrats to oppose the bill if it makes it to the chamber.
Asked last week whether enough Democrats would support the bill to allow it to pass the Senate, Murray said: “I am not going to speculate.”
Before its release, Jeffries strongly opposed the plan — preferring a long-term negotiated deal — and said Johnson and his GOP will need to pass it on their own. But a small number of House Democrats have privately discussed in recent days whether they should support the bill.
Johnson and Trump have described the bill as a “clean” stopgap bill — noting that it doesn’t include language to enshrine certain Trump priorities, such as DOGE cuts. But Democrats argue this kind of long-term stopgap bill lacks critical language that is contained in full-year negotiated bills that would make it easier for their party to put a check on Trump in court, if needed.
Republicans acknowledged the stopgap would give the White House more authority to spend as it chooses — a flexibility that GOP leadership aides described as necessary when Congress’ spending is put on autopilot for another seven months.
“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (“CR”)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” Trump said in a post to social media on Saturday, in a direct push for his party to back the bill.
“Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order,” he wrote.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Betsy Klein and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
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