After Speaker of the House Mike Johnson succeeded in pushing a stopgap spending measure through his chamber Tuesday, Senate Democrats are in a bind. Their dual goals—avoiding a government shutdown and slowing Elon Musk’s slashing path through federal agencies—seem to be in opposition.
Congress must pass a continuing resolution (CR) by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, or else the government’s approved funding will run out, forcing most federal agency functions to shut down. On Tuesday, the House passed its bill to fund the federal government through September basically along party lines, but 60 votes are necessary to pass the bill through the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul already has vowed to break with his party and vote down the CR, meaning that Republicans will need at least eight Democrats to join them to overcome the filibuster and send the spending bill to President Donald Trump’s desk. Republicans have already made it clear they are ready to blame Democrats if a government shutdown occurs.
“I think the American people are going to be interested to see whether Democrats are going to filibuster, and by filibustering, shut down the federal government,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at a press conference Tuesday. “It is on them when this happens.”
As of Wednesday evening, no vote had yet been scheduled in the Senate. That day, the Senate’s Democratic leadership floated the idea of forcing Congress to take up a short-term CR they have proposed to fund the government through April 11 while negotiators finish up a comprehensive appropriations agreement. But such a short-term CR is not the bill the House passed, and its members declared recess and left town after passing their measure.
Negotiations between the two parties in the House and Senate Appropriations Committees broke down weeks ago, leading to the need for a stop-gap funding measure to keep the government open, something neither side wanted. Democrats’ main ask was for language in the measure to ensure that Trump spends money in the way Congress appropriated it, but Republicans argued it was an infringement on the separation of powers. “They were demanding that we put a provision—not just in an appropriations bill, but in the CR—handcuffing the ability of the executive branch to reduce spending,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, told The Dispatch. “Now they proposed that because President Trump is the president, and they don’t like President Trump. If they thought there was any reasonable possibility that we would do that, they must have been day drinking. We wouldn’t do that even when a Democratic president, President Biden, was president.”
Essentially, the choice facing Senate Democrats is to either vote for a Republican CR they strongly oppose or bear the blame for shutting down the government. As they weigh their options, they need to consider several factors.
The first is the political ramifications of a shutdown. Democrats would be gambling that the American people will blame Republicans rather than them in the event that Congress cannot meet the Friday deadline.
“Republicans are in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House, guys. I don’t know what else to tell you,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico told reporters.
Any blame assessed by voters will be reflected in the results of the 2026 midterm elections, but there are also shorter-term considerations for Democrats. The House’s CR does not have the key guarantee they sought: to curtail Trump’s discretion over the spending that Congress appropriates. “The CR actually gives him the ability to spend funds without any congressional oversight,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told The Dispatch.
If they fold now and vote for such a CR, Democrats could lose their leverage on the issue. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia acknowledged that concern among Democrats. “I do know that that is something that Sen. Murray, as the lead Dem, is very mindful of, and exactly what mechanisms you put in place that are guardrails against that I don’t exactly know, but it is an issue that we’ve talked about at some length, and I know Patty is very focused on it,” he said.
But the other option—shutting down non-essential government functions for the first time since 2018—does not guarantee that they will be able to rein in the executive branch. As billionaire Elon Musk attempts to remake federal agencies as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, some Democrats foresee a shutdown as only helping his efforts.
“The CR may enable more firing, but closing the government may be even more welcome to Elon Musk because it gives him an excuse to fire more people, and he can blame it on the Democrats,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told reporters.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon made similar comments.
“I think it would be immensely damaging,” he said of a shutdown. “When I came out, people asked me what I thought, and, as of right now, I think the Musk brigade is doing an enormous amount of damage to essential services like veterans and kids and the like, and I am not going to be part of helping them in it.”
However, he would not say which outcome helps Musk’s team more, nor how he would vote.
With just two days to decide on a course of action, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is saying his caucus will continue to push for the short-term CR, and other Democrats have said they will try to muscle Republicans into agreeing to a vote on an amendment that would shorten the term of the current bill. Otherwise, Democrats have generally been coy about what they would do if the GOP puts the House CR up for a vote. There are a few “no’s,” but most are not saying definitively how they would vote.
One Democrat has been vocally opposed to a shutdown at all costs. Before House Republicans even unveiled their CR, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania tweeted last week that he would “never vote to shut our government down.” Asked about the ramifications of that decision, Fetterman stuck to that promise.
“You don’t have to take me out for dinner here. Cut to the chase. Are you saying I’m going to vote to shut the government down?” he told The Dispatch. “I’ve been very clear I will not vote or withhold my vote to shut the government down.”
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