After a weeks-long match of tug-of-war it seems that Senate Democrats are rolling over and allowing the passage of a Republican-led funding bill full of President Donald Trump’s favored policies, averting a potential government shutdown that would have gone into effect Saturday at midnight.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer very publicly wrestled with the implications of his obstruction before caving on Thursday evening. He subsequently defended his decision in a flurry of social media posts late Thursday night.
Standing in the way of the bill’s passage would mean a government shutdown that would have cleared the way for Trump to fire untold numbers of federal workers and downsize the government even further without recourse—something the president and his allies not-so-secretly have indicated they wanted.
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Allowing its passage, however, would avert the shutdown but hand more power over federal spending to Trump and his right-hand man, Elon Musk.
“President Trump and Republicans Leaders would like nothing more than to pull us into the mud of a protracted government shutdown,” Schumer claimed in one X post Thursday night, adding that it would come as a “gift” to Trump and his administration by distracting “from their true agenda: delivering massive tax cuts to the rich paid for on the backs on American families.”
Schumer echoed his concerns in another late-night X post, writing that a shutdown “would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Schumer said he would vote to advance the bill during its scheduled initial vote Friday and claimed that he had enough Democrats joining him to ultimately satisfy the 60-vote rule needed to pass it.
Only eight Democrats need to vote “yes” Friday to pass the bill.
“I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country to minimize the harms to the American people, Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor. “Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”
Democrats have debated both approaches to the bill for weeks, with each option presenting more control for Trump over spending or federal downsizing, respectively.
The funding bill would hand the Trump administration the ability to cancel individual items in the budget—typically a power reserved for Congress, which traditionally holds the “purse strings.”
Democrats have also objected to the bill’s cuts, which would affect domestic non-defense programs and the District of Columbia’s budget, while also boosting military spending.
A shutdown, however, would leave the door open for Trump to permanently shutter certain functions of the federal government—another nightmare scenario for Democrats opposed to the president’s slash-and-burn approach to governing in his second term.
Trump ally and former Rep. Matt Gaetz made that point explicitly, giving his Republican colleagues an apparent thumbs-up to shut down the government Thursday.
“Someone convince me that a shutdown doesn’t just give Trump and @elonmusk the ability to put DOGE into overdrive,” Gaetz wrote on X Thursday afternoon. “And when lawsuits are filed….tough s***….things get shut down in a shut down.”
Prior to Thursday, however, Republicans had spent weeks laying the blame for a potential shutdown at the feet of Democrats.
The president himself even joined in, blatantly saying: “if it closes, it’s purely on the Democrats.”
“If there’s a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it will be their fault,” Trump added. “And I’m hearing a lot of Democrats are going to vote for it and I hope they do.”
Schumer previously criticized the bill for being drafted without “any input from congressional Democrats.”
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort,” Schumer said on the floor Wednesday. “But Republicans chose a partisan path drafting their continuing resolution without any input from congressional Democrats.”
