Senate Democrats say they will not vote for the House-passed six-month government funding package, which would boost defense spending and cut nondefense programs, unless they first get a vote on a 30-day funding stopgap to give bipartisan negotiators more time to reach a deal on the annual appropriations bills.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) announced on the floor that Democratic senators would not vote to advance the House bill — at least not now — and called for the Senate to instead pass a 30-day “clean” government funding stopgap.
“Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input, any input from congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR [continuing resolution],” he said.
“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope, I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday,” Schumer added.
But there’s no indication that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is ready to let Democrats vote for a 30-day government funding stopgap, or whether 13 Republicans would vote for it.
Republicans have a 53-to-47-seate Senate majority, which means 13 Republicans would need to vote with all Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold most legislation needs to reach to advance in the upper chamber.
Another major problem is that the House adjourned for the week after passing its six-month government funding measure. Even if the Senate manages to pass a 30-day stopgap, there’s no guarantee that the House will pick it up before government funding lapses on Friday.
Even so, Democrats emerged from a long lunch meeting on Wednesday determined to get a vote on a 30-day CR.
“We definitely need a vote on a 30-day,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) after meeting with Senate Democratic colleagues about the strategy for avoiding a government shutdown at week’s end.
He said that would “give us time to do what Senate Republicans have told us they want to do, which is an appropriations bill.”
“We have a clear alternative ready to go,” he said. “This is my read as of right now, the votes are not there to proceed on their one-sided, Republican-only bill.”
The GOP-led bill passed the House on Tuesday on a nearly party-line 217-213 vote.
Other Democrats including Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), also called for the Senate to pass a 30-day continuing resolution.
Murray called the House-passed bill, which received only one Democratic vote in the lower chamber, “a dumpster fire.”
“I need everyone to understand: The choice absolutely is not dumpster fire or shut down. I should know: I introduced another option [Tuesday]. It’s a short-term CR that would give us time to finish doing our job and negotiate bipartisan, full-year bills,” Murray said on the Senate floor.
Kaine confirmed after the Senate Democratic meeting that right now there aren’t enough Democratic votes to pass the six-month House-approved continuing resolution.
“What I do know is this: Democrats had nothing to do with this bill, and we want an opportunity to get an amendment vote or two. That’s what we’re insisting on to vote for cloture,” he said.
Kaine said Congress should pass a 30-day stopgap instead of the House bill “because the Senate appropriators are really close to a deal, and it would be far preferable to a CR.”
“The way to make it better is to do a 30-day completely clean CR and go ahead and finish the deal that we have over here that’s a real [omnibus spending package] for the rest of the year,” he said.
Warner said “I think we want to see that 30-day CR.”
—Updated at 4:07 p.m. EDT
