Government funding runs out in two days, the House is gone and Senate Democrats face a stark choice: Provide the votes for a GOP-authored continuing resolution they’ve been trashing or the federal government shuts down.
Senate Democrats don’t want to shut the government down but also don’t want to look like they’re helping President Donald Trump. And they are agonizing over how to handle what has become a truly unenviable situation.
At least eight Democratic senators will need to walk the plank and support a CR that nearly every member of their caucus has publicly condemned. And during a closed-door lunch meeting on Tuesday that lasted an hour longer than usual, Democratic senators shared several different views on how to handle the mess in front of them.
The prevailing belief after the meeting, according to an attendee and several people briefed on it, was that a shutdown would be a lose-lose situation for Senate Democrats. They’d get the blame and, even worse, there would be no clear path out of a shutdown.
Some Democrats made the case that Trump and mega billionaire Elon Musk would use the crisis to inflict maximum pain on federal employees while denying Democrats any leverage to negotiate their way out of the mess. It could also serve to undermine the party’s messaging on DOGE, not to mention distract from what has already been done, which now includes laying off half the Education Department’s staff. Musk has even suggested that he wants a shutdown.
However, other Senate Democrats believe that easing passage of the House-passed CR would signal capitulation to a Trump administration that Democrats believe is on a lawless rampage.
“We’re not going to be complicit in continuing what they’re doing,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who argued that “Trump and Musk have been shutting down the federal government as it is.”
So Senate Democrats are floating several different strategies — with varying degrees of creativity — that would allow them to avoid this outcome without being accused of aiding or enabling Trump.
One Democratic senator suggested something that mirrors what Senate Republicans did to help Democrats raise the debt limit in 2021 while still being able to vote against the bill. This would involve a handful of Democrats voting with Republicans on cloture so that final passage could be at a simple majority threshold. GOP senators could then pass the CR on their own.
Yet even with this proposal, you could still make the argument that Senate Democrats gave in by allowing that first hurdle to be cleared.
Democrats could also demand votes on amendments in exchange for providing support to advance the measure. If there’s a deal on amendments, they could ask to vote on the short-term CR that Democratic appropriators drafted. This measure won’t pass, but this process would allow Democrats to show they tried to avert a shutdown and then immediately vote against the House-passed CR on final passage without consequences.
Where’s Schumer? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is feeling it the hardest — and his silence on the matter is strategic.
An angry Democratic base is demanding action and would roundly condemn anything other than total resistance to Trump.
Yet Democrats are also wary of being blamed for a shutdown, which would hurt Schumer’s most vulnerable senators. So Schumer staying quiet here is a way to give cover to moderate and vulnerable Democrats to back the CR, which would help avert a shutdown.
Another Senate Democrat complained to us that House Democrats have it easy — they can hem and haw with no consequences as long as the GOP majority can wrangle the votes on their side. The Senate doesn’t have that luxury. (Remember when Senate Democrats tried to gut the filibuster?)
Perhaps the best illustration of Democrats’ anguish was that, even after the House passed the CR Tuesday evening, a few Democratic senators were still pushing for a short-term CR, something they know is off the table at this point.
Here’s Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.):
“We should take up and pass the 30-day CR that lets us finish the bipartisan appropriations bills we’ve already gotten through our committee… instead of simply handing President Trump and Elon Musk even more ability to move things around.”
As for timing, nobody seems to have a clear sense yet of how quickly the Senate could wrap this up. Some senators we spoke with believe they could finish up as soon as today. That’s highly ambitious, although never underestimate “Senate magic.”
As we keep reminding you, senators are on the verge of their first recess week of 2025. It’s been a long slog. We expect Republicans to put a ton more pressure on Democrats until a clear path emerges.
“This is the way to keep the government open,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune declared. “To me, it’s a pretty simple proposition at this point.”
