Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is in position to get what he wants Friday evening by avoiding a government shutdown.
But his fellow Democrats say this week’s deadline was just the beginning, and future negotiations — on higher-stakes negotiations to fund agencies and raise the debt limit — will be even more difficult.
Lawmakers are already running late on the process to fund the government beyond Sept. 30 and are waiting on President Donald Trump to send a budget proposal that was technically due in early February.
They face an unclear deadline to raise the debt limit sometime this summer. And Republicans’ attempt to pass a major tax bill will test both parties’ unity.
Senators cleared a procedural hurdle Friday afternoon, setting the stage for a final vote on a Republican-drafted bill to fund the government through Sept. 30. Passage would avert a shutdown that Schumer warned would hand Trump greater unilateral authority over agency operations.
The decision came at a cost as House and Senate Democrats raged at Schumer (N.Y.) for backing down, and key negotiators say they’re girding for a bigger fight over future funding deals.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has stalled funding and shuttered agencies without input from Congress, has left Democrats wondering if they can negotiate with Republicans at all.
“Will we be able to actually do appropriations bills? I think that’s an open question,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), an appropriator, said Friday. “And there are not a lot of profiles in courage right now.”
Democrats are concerned Trump will “pit states against each other,” favoring, for example, veterans’ health services “in Wyoming, but not in New York,” Heinrich told reporters.
“It’s ‘The Apprentice’ on a much bigger scale,” Heinrich said.
Democrats need to hammer Trump on the economy as much as possible, in the hopes that his polling numbers will crater and Republican lawmakers will stop giving him so much deference, Heinrich said.
Republican appropriators downplayed the likelihood of future standoffs on government funding. They blamed Schumer when he was majority leader for not allowing Senate floor votes on funding bills — even after they were approved by the Appropriations Committee with bipartisan support — and waiting for a standoff before the deadline.
Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will put spending bills on the floor this year, and Republicans are ready to work with Democrats, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), an appropriator. If Democrats want bipartisan bills, “that’s a unifying principle right there,” Capito said.
‘Cut Out’
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Democrats’ only recourse is to use the filibuster on must-pass measures, a weapon they declined to wield this week.
“Our only leverage to make sure we’re in the room is to deny cloture on appropriations,” Murphy said in a hallway interview Thursday. “So are we prepared to do that in September? We got cut out of this negotiation on this spending bill.”
While lawmakers have more than six months until the next government funding deadline, they’ll need to make progress on spending measures this summer, if they stand a chance of meeting that deadline.
Democrats have complained about the deference Republicans have shown Trump and Musk.
“There’s been a lot of trust broken in the appropriations process,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said in a hallway interview Thursday. She criticized Republicans, who did not “insist upon seeing our work through,” and instead falling back on a stopgap measure for the rest of the year.
Democrats’ ire isn’t reserved for Republicans. Schumer faces heat from his own party for his decision to support the GOP bill. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the move in a Friday statement, saying a shutdown and a stopgap are both bad options. “But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
Debt Limit, Taxes
Schumer’s allies say there’s no threat to his position as Democratic leader. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) acknowledged the vote put Democrats in “an extremely difficult situation,” but said they have to “immediately shift our focus on the reconciliation bill.”
Republicans aim to pass much of their legislative agenda through the reconciliation process, bypassing the filibuster. The package could include an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, trillions of dollars in spending cuts, a budget boost for the military and border agencies, and a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit, according to a framework adopted by the House.
Republicans may fail to pass some of their priorities through reconciliation, leading them to seek Democrats’ help. A debt-limit measure would be particularly difficult, given that dozens of House Republicans have never backed a debt-limit increase that ended up enacted into law.
Some tax provisions also may not be allowed under the reconciliation process, sparking a conversation about bipartisan talks. Trump’s vow to cut taxes on Social Security income may not be eligible for the fast-tracked process, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said. If that’s the case, “the discussion would be, how do we do this with 60 votes?” he said.
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