By Richard Cowan and Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats huddled for hours on Wednesday plotting a course forward on a stopgap funding bill passed by the Republican-controlled House, with only two more days remaining before a partial government shutdown would be triggered.
In a gambit that is unlikely to succeed, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called for a one-month extension of existing spending with the aim of providing time to complete more comprehensive appropriations bills for this year.
Schumer warned that his caucus of 47 senators “is unified” in opposing the 6-1/2 month funding bill passed by the House with only one Democrat there voting in favor of it.
Blocking the bill would require at least 41 of Schumer’s Democrats to vote against limiting debate on it, which could stop the measure dead in its tracks and could lead to a partial shutdown, which Democrats have long opposed as needless chaos.
Their wariness of a shutdown comes amid Trump’s rapid-fire campaign to unilaterally shutter many federal operations, which Democrats note is already causing disruption.
“I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday,” Schumer said in a short speech to the Senate.
Republicans moved to place the blame squarely on Democrats.
“If they decide to shut down the government, it’s 100% a Schumer shutdown at that point,” Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin told Reuters.
The bill would achieve some reductions in non-defense programs and beef up military spending, while handing Trump more say over how the money would be spent.
Democrats are seeking votes that could highlight spending cuts that many of their voters oppose.
Americans are broadly supportive of the idea of cutting the size of the federal government, with 59% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday saying they supported that goal.
But they expressed concern about the way Trump was going about doing so, with a similar 59% saying the opposed the moves to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.
Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who did not attend his party’s mid-day meeting, downplayed options for his party.
“I’m not sure how realistic you’re going to have any other choices than the one that’s in front of us,” Fetterman told reporters, referring to the House-passed funding bill.
Fetterman criticized elements of the House-passed bill, such as a nearly $1 billion cut to the District of Columbia’s budget, which Democrats argued is financed with city residents’ and businesses’ tax payments.
Nonetheless, Fetterman said he is willing to vote for the House-passed bill, adding, “I will never vote for chaos — or even more chaos than we are already in right now by forcing a government shutdown.”
Congressional brinkmanship, including repeated near-misses with shutdowns and over the nation’s $36 trillion in debt, has contributed to global ratings agencies’ moves to downgrade the U.S.
federal government’s once-pristine credit rating.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Bo Erickson; Editing by Scott Malone, Lincoln Feast and Alistair Bell)
