Spending bill to avert a shutdown is headed to Trump's desk

WASHINGTON — A six-month stopgap funding bill cleared the Senate on Friday after enough Democrats crossed the aisle to vote to end debate, defying intense pressure from the left wing of their party.

The measure now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he’s expected to sign it and avert a partial government shutdown that was otherwise set to begin at midnight.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who enraged progressive activists and many fellow Democrats in both chambers by announcing his support Thursday night, voted for cloture Friday, which requires 60 votes.

The 62-38 cloture vote saw nine members of his caucus join Schumer on the key procedural vote: Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois; Schumer’s fellow New Yorker Kirsten Gillibrand; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada; Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire; Brian Schatz of Hawaii; and Gary Peters of Michigan. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, also voted for cloture.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the lone GOP “no” vote.

The bill then cleared on a 54-46 vote after a series of amendments were rejected, including one from Paul to cut foreign aid.

Several Democrats who voted for cloture turned around and voted against the bill on final passage, since their votes weren’t needed given the simple-majority threshold. Only Shaheen and King voted for it.

Democrats had pushed for an alternative proposal: a short-term continuing resolution through April 11, which in theory would buy time for further negotiations on fully fleshed out fiscal 2025 spending bills.

But there wasn’t enough support on the Republican side to get their monthlong CR through, particularly with the House out of session until March 24, other than for pro forma meetings.

As part of the deal to complete work on the spending bill on Friday, party leaders agreed to bring to the floor a stand-alone bill from Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to fix a glaring omission from the CR.

The House GOP-drafted measure left out a provision typically included in stopgap bills that allows the District of Columbia government to spend at rates equal to its current budget, rather than the prior fiscal year’s. So in effect city officials would be forced to revert to fiscal 2024 levels, requiring a $1.1 billion budget cut to be squeezed into the remaining half of the fiscal year.

The Senate was expected to pass the bill Friday night, but it was unclear when and if House GOP leaders would bring it up in their chamber.

Clearing the yearlong stopgap measure Friday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on the floor earlier Friday, would allow Congress to close the books on last year’s business and move on to fiscal 2026 spending and other agenda items. He promised a return to regular-order consideration of appropriations bills on the floor, with debate and amendments.

“Last year’s Democrat majority pushed off full-year appropriations again and again,” Thune, of South Dakota, said. “Another CR was nobody’s first choice, but I can tell you this: The next time the Senate votes on an appropriation bill, it won’t be on the eve of another shutdown.”

Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., then went to the floor to correct the record as she saw it. She pointedly noted that House GOP leaders punted final decisions until March with their December stopgap measure and then refused to allow negotiations on final full-year bills to progress.

“It’s been a while since my time as a preschool teacher, but I guess school’s back in session. Because I’m not going to let anyone get away with ignoring how Republicans forced us to the edge of a shutdown today,” Murray said. “In my time in Congress, never, ever has one party written partisan full year appropriations bills for all of government and expected the other party to go along without any input.”

But unexpected GOP unity in the House on the yearlong continuing resolution — a rarity for a government spending bill — left Senate Democrats with few good options.

For most of this week, there was a real debate raging inside the party over whether they should block cloture, which requires 60 votes, and force a shutdown. That was the calculation House Democrats made, but it’s unclear how much of that was due to the eventual realization Republicans in that chamber had the votes to pass the bill on their own.

In the Senate, Democrats were more squarely put on the spot given the chamber’s 60-vote threshold, with Republicans holding only 53 seats — and one GOP senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, typically a “no” vote on spending measures.

On Wednesday, Schumer briefly got progressive activists’ hopes up by declaring in a floor speech that Republicans did not have the votes to get their stopgap bill through and therefore needed to come to the negotiating table. But Thune waited them out, given Democrats’ alternative proposal didn’t have the votes, either.

By Thursday, it became abundantly clear there were only two options: the GOP six-month bill or a shutdown. Many Senate Democrats continued to say publicly that they couldn’t support the Republican bill, but others stayed quiet.

Outside a caucus meeting Thursday, reporters in the hallway heard Gillibrand shouting at her colleagues that a shutdown was worse than the GOP CR. She wouldn’t comment after the meeting, but it quickly leaked that Schumer told Democrats in the meeting that he would ultimately vote to allow the CR to pass.

Later, he went to the floor to announce his position publicly but reserved comment on whether his side would provide the votes needed to achieve cloture.

On Friday morning, Schumer — a lawyer by training although he never practiced — reiterated his case for avoiding a shutdown that he carefully laid out the night before.

“A shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” Schumer said, giving Trump and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk “a much broader field of destruction.” He said the administration would have sweeping latitude to define which federal activities could continue and how many workers could stay on the job.

“Their views on what is ‘nonessential’ would be mean and vicious and would decimate vital services and cause unimaginable harm to the American people,” Schumer said. “If the government were to shut down, DOGE has a plan in place to exploit the crisis for maximum destruction.”

House Democrats, meanwhile, were doing their part to undermine Schumer. The joint leadership issued a statement Thursday night after Schumer’s speech, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. — the progressive firebrand oft-cited as a potential Schumer primary challenger — blasted his decision on TV and social media.

On Friday, Schumer’s longtime ally and partner on the House side, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined the chorus of criticism, without directly naming Schumer. Pelosi said that House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., had presented a better option with their April 11 extension bill.

“Democrats must not buy into this false choice” between a shutdown and the GOP bill, Pelosi said. “We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., refused to provide Schumer any cover Friday during a news conference at his caucus’ policy retreat in Virginia.

“Next question,” Jeffries said when asked if it is time for new leadership in the Senate.

Making matters worse potentially for Schumer, Trump on Friday praised the New Yorker’s “’guts’ and courage” on his Truth Social platform. “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing,” Trump wrote, calling it a “really good and smart move.”

But Schumer had his defenders on the Democratic side, including Jay S. Jacobs, the New York state party chairman, who argued a shutdown would hurt Democrats’ electoral prospects in 2026 and 2028.

“Too many Democrats prefer the ‘circular firing squad’ and ‘eating our own’ to the more effective approach of finding the right long-term strategy,” Jacobs said. “Every day that the government remains shut and on austerity would be another day of MAGA mayhem.”

This week’s action marks a rare instance in which Congress has resorted to a full-year stopgap measure that keeps funding mostly on autopilot, instead of enacting new, detailed appropriations bills.

The Pentagon, in particular, has never operated under a full-year continuing resolution and has long resisted such an outcome, saying it would hamstring the ability to respond to new threats.

The CR tries to address that concern by including a blanket provision allowing for the start of new programs, but it’s not clear how many new programs could be funded. The measure would give the Pentagon general transfer authority of $8 billion, so defense officials could rearrange their fiscal priorities up to that level before requiring new congressional approval.

There are various “anomalies” to cure issues with nondefense programs as well, with targeted increases for programs ranging from low-income housing to immigration enforcement to aid for low-income households to help buy baby formula. But GOP leaders scrapped billions of dollars in earmarked funds for members’ home states and districts to help cut costs.

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