Congress
Tables turn for Democrats as they use shutdown for leverage
On one side is the minority party, using what little leverage it has — a looming government funding deadline — to push for priorities it can’t enact otherwise. On the other is the majority, insisting a short-term funding punt is no place for negotiation.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because just such a scenario has played out dozens of times on Capitol Hill over the past decade and a half — usually with Republicans pushing for policy concessions and Democrats insisting on a “clean” stopgap.
Not this time. The roles have been reversed between the two parties as Congress barrels toward a government shutdown on Oct. 1 with no obvious off-ramp in sight.
It’s Republicans who are pushing a “clean” seven-week continuing resolution, which they say will buy time for more negotiations on full-year spending bills and possibly an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. Democrats, meanwhile, wrote an alternative four-week punt that tacks on a laundry list of other demands, including a permanent extension of the insurance subsidies.
Conservative Republicans who have balked at past stopgaps have signed on to their party’s strategy, as have Democrats who have traditionally been most loath to flirt with shutdowns — such as the Washington-area members who represent federal workers who stand to be furloughed.
“My brain’s falling out of my head,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) said in an interview. ”When you talk about the Freedom Caucus talking about passing a CR and the Democrats saying, ‘I’m going to shut down the government.’ I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
There are myriad reasons for the current moment’s Bizarro World politics, but the biggest is a transformation of incentives. Where Republicans have spent most of the past 15 years heeding the wishes of a party base spoiling for a fight, damn the consequences, it’s now Democrats in that position. The GOP, meanwhile, is in lockstep behind President Donald Trump, who is determined to corner his opposition.
The current situation, in fact, is a nearly precise inversion of the standoff seen in the fall of 2013, when conservative Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sparked a shutdown over a demand to reverse Democrats’ signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act. They backed down after 17 days.
“It did not work for them,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) recalled last week as he reflected on how Democrats are now seeking a reversal of parts of the GOP’s own signature legislation — health care provisions in the domestic policy bill the party passed in July. Democrats also want to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies that expire at the end of this year.
“They tied something unrelated to spending, Obamacare, and shut down the government,” Cole added. “That was the wrong thing to do then. … You are doing the same thing now. It’s nothing else.”
Democrats at the time insisted that any funding bill stay free of policy provisions. Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid at the time cast the choice for the GOP as “whether to pass the Senate’s clean CR or force a Republican government shutdown.”
They said much the same when they had majorities under President Joe Biden. According to statistics that have been circulated by Senate Republicans this month, Congress complied by passing 13 clean funding stopgaps in that four-year stretch.
Pressed on the turning of the tables, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday insisted there was an articulable distinction.
“What’s different? They were taking something away,” he told reporters. “We’re trying to restore something that they took away. It’s a world of difference when you’re trying to do some good for people rather than doing negative stuff for people.”
It’s not just Democrats who have had to confront a tactical 180 in the current fight. Facing grumbling from the right flank of his conference, Speaker Mike Johnson vowed last year to never pass another continuing resolution to fund the government. On Friday, he muscled through the second GOP-backed stopgap of 2025.
One House Republican described a closed-door conference meeting last week like being in “the Twilight Zone,” as several hard-liners who once opposed continuing resolutions as preludes to bloated, opaque omnibus spending bills voiced support for a short-term punt.
Among those who spoke up was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former House Freedom Caucus chair, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the hard-right group who used to push for shutdowns but now urged his colleagues to “send Chuck Schumer a clean CR.”
The key difference this time is Trump, who publicly backed both GOP-led stopgaps this year. It’s also helped that his budget director, Russell Vought, has delighted conservatives by seeking to formally rescind or simply not spend money Congress has previously appropriated. Democrats are now seeking a prohibition on those moves in the current standoff.
“There’s nothing clean about the administration undermining Congress,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said.
Last week, Democrats were mainly fuming about Trump’s comments that GOP leaders shouldn’t “even bother dealing with” them. On Friday, he predicted “it could very well end up with a closed country for a period of time.” A day later, after top Democratic leaders demanded a meeting, he said he would “love to meet with them, but I don’t think it’s going to have any impact.”
“Donald Trump told them, ‘Don’t talk to the Democrats,’ and so they didn’t,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said. “He wanted a clean CR, and he got it on the House side. I’m not sure what he’ll get in the Senate.”
Trump’s comments fueled partisan tensions that spilled into plain sight Friday with Schumer and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican leader, bickering on the Senate floor.
Barrasso accused Schumer of trying to take funding “hostage,” blocking Schumer’s attempt to claim speaking time to ask a question.
“The reason we are having a shutdown now is you and your leadership refused to talk to Democrats or have any input,” Schumer said in response. “Never a shutdown when we were in the leadership.”
Top Republican leaders are supremely confident that Democrats are holding a losing hand — based in part on the outcomes of past shutdown fights their own party instigated.
“You learn from past experience,” Thune said, responding to a question about the 2013 shutdown. “When you’re the ones who are trying to have a bunch of new stuff, generally, I think you’re the ones who end up getting blamed when there’s a shutdown.”
But Democrats so far have continued to dig in — including those members who have tended to serve as an internal bulwark against brinkmanship. Typically members with constituencies heavy on federal workers have been wary of shutdowns, but even they are dead set on opposing Republicans’ recent Medicaid cuts and securing the insurance subsidy extension.
“Everything they’re doing is designed to protect their dismantling of Medicaid and the health care system, and we made a very emphatic statement that we are going to stand strong,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said.
GOP leaders believe if Senate Democrats don’t fold right away, they’ll get an earful from constituents when they’re back home this week for the Rosh Hashanah break.
They’re eyeing members such as Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who has been adamant in public that Republicans will bear the cost of a shutdown. Republicans think Warner, who is seeking reelection next year, is likely to change his tune. “I don’t know if they’ll want to stick it out then,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to speak frankly about party strategy.
But Warner said Friday he was ready to fight, citing “17 million Americans going without health insurance, cancer rates going up dramatically, [the] country visibly sicker with cuts to research.”
“I know the president may not want to acknowledge checks and balances,” Warner said. But “he can’t do this with Republican-only votes.”
Hailey Fuchs, Jordain Carney, Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have long prided themselves on working together to advance government funding bills. That collegiality is now showing signs of decay.
The Maine Republican and Washington Democrat have been openly feuding about the path forward on spending measures this summer. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.
Democrats attribute the clash to Collins’ pursuit of President Donald Trump’s demands for a record military budget that eclipses domestic spending, as she fights to retain her Senate seat in November. Republicans say Murray is playing midterm politics by trying to prevent Collins from landing a deal before Election Day, when Democrats hope to regain House and Senate majorities — and the upper hand in year-end funding talks.
“It’s not personal, but it is very frustrating,” Collins said last week, while insisting she and Murray are still on good terms.
All Murray would say about the state of their relationship was, “We’re talking.”
While that impasse doesn’t necessarily heighten the odds of a government shutdown this fall, it could delay any meaningful Senate appropriations action until after the elections. The outcome of congressional races — including Collins’ toss-up contest against Democrat Graham Platner — could change the power balance in government funding negotiations.
“It certainly looks to me like the Democrats don’t want to give Susan Collins a victory,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview. “I really think it’s intensely political. She is a very reasonable legislator. If you can’t make a deal with Susan Collins, you don’t want to make a deal.”
Part of Collins’ campaign-trail pitch to Mainers is that she gets results in Washington, and her inability to advance the dozen annual appropriations bills through her committee undercuts that narrative.
Collins isn’t refuting the idea that Democrats might want to deprive her of legislative success as she competes against Platner in one of the closest and most-watched races in the country.
“That’s certainly a viable theory, which is pretty pathetic,” she said in an interview.
This month Collins publicly accused Murray of sending government funding offers that have “made it clear that Democrats are abandoning the appropriations process.” Murray, meanwhile, suggested Collins was at fault for the stalemate by divulging she hadn’t responded to Murray’s latest offer in more than two weeks.
It’s a major tone shift for the two lawmakers, who have earned a reputation for trying to stay out of the partisan fray since they became their party’s top leaders on the Appropriations Committee in 2023. They’ve consistently resisted broadcasting behind-the-scenes friction during tough negotiations and succeeded in reaching cross-party compromises to advance funding bills each year — even after the record government shutdown last fall.
But they’re now at loggerheads over funding totals for the military and domestic programs, along with votes on hot-button Trump policies. Senate Republicans are seeking a military funding boost more than four times larger than any increase in domestic spending, as Trump calls for a record $1.5 trillion defense budget.
“We do not have an agreement,” Murray said, because Republicans “are set on increasing defense in an increasingly huge way that we’ve never had to deal with before.”
GOP senators also want to avoid any amendment votes that could sink approval of appropriations bills, including some related to the Justice Department’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” administration officials have promised not to pursue.
The result is that Collins has yet to hold a committee markup on a single government funding bill with just three months left before federal dollars expire. And some Republican appropriators acknowledge it’s possible the panel won’t vote on any of the spending measures this year given the deadlock.
“Obviously Susan is up this year. And Democrats, at every level and every opportunity, are playing politics with it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview. “The appropriations process used to be fairly bipartisan. … Murray and the Democrats have turned it into a partisan game.”
Some Democrats openly sympathize with Collins’ predicament in trying to represent politically moderate Maine while holding one of the most influential positions on Capitol Hill during Trump’s second term and unified Republican control of Congress.
“The chair of the committee is being squeezed in every direction,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview.
Many Senate Republicans don’t “give a damn” about funding domestic efforts like public education and biomedical research, Baldwin continued. “I believe that the chairwoman does care about those issues. But you know, she’s in an unenviable position.”
Since Trump was reelected, Collins has worked to negotiate funding bills that spend far more on domestic programs than the president sought. The result has been essentially flat funding for nondefense programs and a 17 percent increase in military spending, which includes the billions of dollars Republicans enacted along party lines last year.
“Chair Collins is very devoted to, or interested in, following through to help the president get more money for the Department of War and munitions, et cetera,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a top Republican appropriator. “And I think Senator Murray is on the opposite page.”
“Rather than legislate and work these things out,” Capito added, “I think it’s been decided on the other side to just be obstinate and not participate and not negotiate.”
Trump is calling this year for boosting Pentagon spending by more than 40 percent while slashing domestic programs by 10 percent. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a senior Democratic appropriator who has served in Congress for more than 40 years, calls it “a massive change” in the way government funding has been divvied up for decades — by negotiating matching dollar-for-dollar increases in both military and nondefense funding.
“We’re so far apart. We haven’t faced anything like that in recent memory,” Durbin said in an interview. “And to accept the premise of it — what’s left for nondefense is terrible.”
Collins could proceed with markups this summer without an agreement with Democrats, as the House Republican majority has done for years. But Republican senators would need to be willing to vote on controversial amendments Democrats might offer — including proposals that defy Trump.
Senate Republican appropriators faced that issue last summer, when the panel unexpectedly adopted an amendment barring the Trump administration from repurposing cash intended for relocating the FBI headquarters. That outcome prompted several GOP senators to withdraw support for the funding bill.
“The challenge is that, if you have every Democrat voting against reporting the bill out — and then they also are offering poison pills — it’s hard to move those bills,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, said in an interview.
During the two years Murray chaired the full committee, Moran recalled, “We had members who wanted to offer what would probably be considered poison pills by Democrats. And Senator Collins talked Republicans out of doing so, to move the process.”
The two sides could easily reach an agreement on amendments and policy stipulations, some Democrats contend, if only Collins and Murray could bridge the divide between the president’s military funding demands and their own domestic priorities.
“Senator Collins is carrying out the administration’s wishes,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, another senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “And Senator Murray is noting that a reckless increase in defense spending is not in the best interest of Americans.”
“So they’re both advocating for their viewpoint,” Merkley added. “That’s what we do in a democracy.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.
The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.
That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.
However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.
Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.
The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.
“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”
The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.
The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.
The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he plans to deploy an unusual procedural maneuver in a bid to unfreeze the House floor this week, seeking to send the annual Pentagon policy bill and the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act to the Senate in a single package.
That is likely a recipe for a continued standoff between the two chambers over the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP divides. Under Johnson’s plan, the annual defense policy bill, which typically passes every year with large bipartisan majorities, could become a collateral victim of the impasse.
Asked in brief interview if he had talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune about his plans, Johnson replied, “I have to do my job in the House, and they’ve got to do their job in the Senate, so we’ll see what happens.”
Johnson is seeking to placate House conservative hard-liners, led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who have threatened to oppose the procedural measures that give Republicans control of the floor unless they agree to tougher tactics meant to force the Senate into passing the elections bill.
House GOP leaders discussed the plan to merge the two bills over the weekend as Luna pushed to amend the defense bill directly.
She did not say in an interview Monday whether Johnson’s gambit would suffice: “We want it baked together, not able to be stripped out,” she said.
But the Senate is free to work its own will, and members of that chamber are likely to reject any defense bill that has the partisan elections bill attached. That would set the stage for GOP leaders to strip it out when the House and Senate hash out the differences between their competing Pentagon bills later this year.
Johnson, meanwhile, is pushing a separate plan to pass a slimmed-down version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process — an option hard-liners have all but rejected.
“I don’t think that that can be done,” Luna told reporters Monday.
He’s also facing another complication: The version of the SAVE America Act he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon bill doesn’t include the latest demands for the bill from President Donald Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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