Breaking: Schumer Says GOP Lacks Votes for Spending Bill, Increasing Shutdown Odds

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Wednesday that Republicans do not have enough Democratic votes in the upper chamber to advance the House-passed GOP government funding bill to President Donald Trump’s desk, complicating GOP congressional leaders’ path to averting a shutdown ahead of the March 14 funding deadline.

Schumer is instead pushing for a 30-day continuing resolution, calling Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R., La.) stopgap funding bill to fund the government through September a “partisan path” that cannot clear the upper chamber’s 60-vote threshold for passing legislation.

"Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 [continuing resolution] that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass," Schumer said after a closed-door meeting with his colleagues on Wednesday afternoon, also lambasting Republicans for not getting input from his party when drafting the bill.

The Senate Democratic leader’s announcement increases the odds of a shutdown, which both parties are preemptively blaming on each other. House Republicans left town after Tuesday’s vote, further complicating negotiations ahead of the fast-approaching deadline. Funding will lapse at 12:01 a.m. Saturday if leaders do not agree on a deal.

Pressed by reporters on the possibility over the weekend, Trump said a shutdown “could” happen. "I mean the Democrats want that," Trump said. "They want to destroy the country. So I can't tell you. But it could happen. It shouldn't have happened. And, it probably won't. I think the CR is going to get passed. We'll see. But, it could happen. You never know. The Democrats are out of control."

Congressional Democrats have spent recent weeks threatening to vote against Republican-authored legislation to keep the government running, arguing that the GOP trifecta in Washington means that the responsibility falls on Republican lawmakers alone.

Facing pressure from grassroots groups and progressive voters to oppose the Trump agenda, Democrats see government funding negotiations as one remaining area of leverage in their efforts to push back against the administration’s efforts to reshape and shrink the federal bureaucracy at breakneck speed.

Some Democratic lawmakers have said that voting for GOP-authored legislation to fund the government will only further embolden Trump’s efforts to dismantle it. "He's shutting down the government already. And so, we shouldn't enable a further shutdown of services,” Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) told NR last month.