Senate Democrats may very well be on track to vote to shut down the government rather than cave to the House GOP’s six-and-a-half-month funding bill.
At least, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday, Democrats are ready to vote that way at the moment.
Senate Democrats emerged from a closed-door lunch telling reporters they were ready to reject the Republican government funding bill.
“Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR,” Schumer said on the floor. “Our caucus is unified.”
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And in case Schumer’s message wasn’t clear that Democrats won’t lend Republicans the handful of votes they need to end debate on the bill and move to a final vote, other Senate Democrats made the point repeatedly.
“They do not have the votes on cloture,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said.
Government funding runs out at midnight on Friday. Most Senate Democrats are pushing for a 30-day stopgap bill to allow lawmakers to continue negotiating on a broader spending deal, despite House GOP leaders sending their members home and saying they would refuse such a measure.
“A short-term CR would allow us to put a bipartisan measure in front of the Senate,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin told reporters Wednesday, noting that the Democratic caucus’ stopgap bill would expire on April 11.
Yet another Senate Democrat, John Hickenlooper, suggested an even shorter stopgap — one week — underscoring the caucus’ scramble for more time to negotiate a larger appropriations package.
“We’re stuck in this limbo of a shutdown or a 30 day,” Hickenlooper said. “Why not a seven day? We’ve got budget bills … all we need to do is spend a week, a few days negotiating those.”
At least eight Senate Democrats would need to vote to advance the bill, given at least one Senate Republican — Rand Paul — is opposed to it. Sen. John Fetterman is the only Democrat so far to say he’d vote in favor of the legislation.
Still, as much as Democrats voice their demands, they have little leverage over the legislative process. They can withhold their votes, but Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. They control the floors in both chambers. And Senate Republicans have wholly cast the funding bill until October as the only option.
“We are unified in not wanting to shut down the government,” Sen. Tina Smith said, saying that the Senate needs to “vote on the short-term CR.” But when a reporter pressed Smith on whether a short-term bill was really an option, she walked into an elevator and didn’t answer.
“That’s what I’ve got to say,” Smith added as the doors closed.
Sen. Tim Kaine told reporters that the working plan involves voting on the 30-day CR as an amendment to the House-approved spending bill. Kaine credited Schumer with orchestrating the scheme, after the minority leader “heard everybody out yesterday” and determined that “this would seem to unify a lot of us.”
Kaine also floated, without divulging specifics, that Democrats “have reason to believe” a handful of Republicans are open to backing their amendment.
“We have an opportunity here to put a 30-day CR on the floor and see if we have the votes for that,” Sen. Mark Kelly — who has left the door open to backing the GOP-led alternative should the Democratic gambit fail — told reporters.
“We should,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune later seemed open to an amendment vote if it allowed the chamber to reach a time agreement.
“If they want to set up a, some sort of a consent agreement where we vote on that, we’ll see,” Thune told reporters.
Paul, at least, expects some sort of an amendment process, saying he feels “comfortable” that he will get a vote on his amendment to codify cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Of course, Senate Democrats could be bluffing. As they face pressure from voters — and vocal House Democrats — to mount resistance to Trump, Democrats are looking to seize any opportunity they can to display some semblance of opposition to the GOP, even if it causes a government shutdown.
But for a Democratic caucus that’s supposedly “unified,” a number of senators emerging from the meeting Wednesday looked frustrated.
Senate Democrats are expected to huddle again Thursday to discuss their strategy. There’s no clear decision on whether they’ll be demanding multiple amendment votes on the seven-month resolution — or any measure, for that matter — in exchange for moving the bill forward.
Senate GOP leaders haven’t shown any eagerness to haggle.
“If they wanted to back a 30-day CR and say that they can do their job in 30 days, why haven’t they negotiated until now?” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who has become an unofficial nexus between House and Senate Republicans.
“Let’s just go ahead and fund the government for the rest of the year at the current spending levels,” Mullin said.
But the current GOP bill doesn’t fund the government at current levels. It cuts $8 billion from current spending, adding and subtracting dollars to hundreds of individual line-items. The bill is, in many ways, closer to an omnibus spending bill than a continuing resolution. And the bill doesn’t prevent Trump from continuing to block congressionally appropriated funds from their congressionally directed purpose.
Those are just some of the reasons Democrats are ready to vote no.
Whether Schumer can convince his caucus to remain opposed to the bill once the government shuts down is the question. Several Democratic senators appeared less than thrilled with the current strategy.
Leaving the meeting Wednesday afternoon, multiple senators were visibly discouraged. Several Democrats declined to comment or gave only short responses when asked about the status of the bill. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Jacky Rosen — two potential swing votes — huddled with Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Michael Bennet for several minutes on the Senate floor.
Even the usually chatty Sen. Elizabeth Warren — an outspoken opponent of the GOP spending bill — declined to take questions from reporters after the meeting.
It’s also unclear which Republicans would support a short term bill. One of the likeliest candidates, moderate Sen. Susan Collins, previously expressed hesitancy with the House bill. But, at this point, Collins said, “I think it’s too late.”
“The House has gone home and the president said that he would veto a short-term CR,” she said.
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Ursula Perano and Riley Rogerson are reporters at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Daniella Diaz, who is a reporter at NOTUS, and Em Luetkemeyer, who is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.
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