U.S. Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-NY) holds a press convention following the Senate Democrats weekly coverage lunch on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., November 19, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
The Senate handed a six-month funding invoice Friday to avert a authorities shutdown hours forward of the midnight deadline, sending it to President Donald Trump to signal into regulation.
The vote was 54-46, with two Democrats becoming a member of all however one Republican in voting sure. Earlier Friday, the invoice cleared a key procedural hurdle with the assistance of 10 Democrats in a 62-38 vote. Sixty votes had been wanted to defeat a Democratic filibuster.
The votes got here after a dramatic 48-hour interval throughout which Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., broke with most Home and Senate Democrats, saying he would help shifting ahead on the invoice at some point after he declared it did not have the votes. Schumer in the end voted no on last passage of the laws.
The invoice, which cleared the Home on a party-line vote earlier this week, will maintain the federal government funded by means of Sept. 30, the tip of the present fiscal 12 months.
Underneath strain from his left flank and Home Democrats to dam the GOP funding bundle, Schumer had stored his playing cards near the vest about his shutdown technique all through the week.
However on Thursday, Schumer stated he would vote to advance the funding invoice, giving cowl to different Democrats to do the identical and considerably decreasing the specter of a catastrophic shutdown amid broader financial uncertainty.
Defending his determination in a ground speech Friday, Schumer warned {that a} shutdown could be far worse than passing the GOP invoice. He argued {that a} shutdown would give Trump, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk and the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) much more energy to slash the federal workforce and authorities providers. They may do this, Schumer stated, by dictating who’re “important” and non-essential employees in a shutdown.
“Clearly, this can be a Hobson’s selection; the CR is a nasty invoice. However as dangerous because the CR is, I consider permitting Donald Trump to take even way more energy through a authorities shutdown is a far worse possibility,” Schumer stated.
“A shutdown would enable DOGE to shift into overdrive. … It could give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to town, state and nation,” he continued.
A view of the US Capitol constructing in Washington, DC, on March 10, 2025.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Photographs
Along with Schumer, 9 different Democrats voted to advance the invoice: Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Gary Peters of Michigan, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Angus King, a Maine unbiased who caucuses with Democrats.
However simply two of these Democratic Caucus members — Shaheen and King — voted sure on the underlying funding invoice.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the one Republican to oppose the invoice on each the procedural and last votes.
Cortez Masto echoed Schumer, saying a shutdown would place 1000’s of federal employees on unpaid furlough and hand Trump and Musk extra energy to intestine federal companies.
“A authorities shutdown would be devastating for the American folks. It could pressure tens of 1000’s of Nevada navy personnel, union members, regulation enforcement brokers and nurses to work with out pay,” Cortez Masto stated in an announcement. “The final authorities shutdown value the American economic system $11 billion and 1000’s of hardworking People had been harmed. I can not vote for that.”
Schumer’s transfer, nonetheless, infuriated Home Democrats, who had been gathered 40 miles away in Leesburg, Virginia, at their annual coverage retreat. All however one Home Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, had voted towards Speaker Mike Johnson’s six-month invoice on Tuesday.
Forward of Friday’s procedural vote, Home Democratic ladies held a information convention and urged their Senate colleagues to carry the road towards the GOP invoice.
“The American folks actually are shouting from the rooftops that this can be a five-alarm emergency and that we can not hand the keys of the dominion of this huge, lovely democracy that we love over to someone who has complete disregard, not just for the rule of regulation, however for American lives,” stated Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, the highest Democrat on the Home DOGE subcommittee.
Underscoring the schism amongst Hill Democrats, Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y, and his management workforce returned to the Capitol on Friday and held a information convention imploring Senate Democrats to reject the GOP funding invoice.
They pushed Congress to as an alternative move a 30-day stopgap funding invoice that may purchase bipartisan negotiators extra time to strike a yearlong appropriations deal on funding the federal government.
“It is an unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American spending invoice. That is why Home Democrats stay strongly opposed,” stated Jeffries, flanked by his prime lieutenants, Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.
“Home Democrats are right here. We’re able to move a four-week spending invoice that retains the federal government open and can enable the Home and the Senate to barter an precise settlement that meets the wants of the American folks,” Jeffries added.
The GOP laws is just not a typical stopgap measure, often called a unbroken decision or CR, that merely extends funding at present ranges. The 99-page spending invoice features a slight enhance in navy spending and a $13 billion reduce in home nondefense spending. It was crafted by GOP leaders, who took enter from the White Home and excluded Democrats from the method.
On prime of that, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the rating member of the Appropriations Committee, and different Democrats lamented that the invoice is structured in a method that arms the Trump administration an excessive amount of flexibility in how you can spend sure pots of cash. A memo from Murray stated the GOP measure creates “slush funds for the Trump administration to reshape spending priorities, eradicate longstanding packages, decide winners and losers.”
The invoice would additionally pressure the District of Columbia to revert again to its fiscal 12 months 2024 funds ranges, chopping native spending by greater than $1 billion, which might impression faculties, police and and different providers.
Talking on the ground, Senate Majority Chief John Thune, R-S.D., argued that lawmakers have been compelled to move one more stopgap funding measure as a result of Democrats, who managed the Senate majority within the final Congress, didn’t full the common appropriations course of final 12 months.
The Senate Appropriations Committee had handed and despatched to the ground 11 out of the 12 appropriations payments that fund federal companies and the legislative department, Thune stated, however Schumer by no means introduced them to a vote.
“So right now we’re attempting to complete up final 12 months’s work in order that we are able to start to do that 12 months’s work,” Thune stated Friday. “To be clear, Republicans aren’t thrilled about one other CR however it’s our greatest choice to guarantee that final 12 months’s failure by Democrats does not intrude with this 12 months’s appropriations course of.”
