WASHINGTON—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that he will support advancing a House-passed stopgap funding bill, effectively foreclosing the risk of a government shutdown.
“I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” Schumer said in a March 13 speech on the Senate floor.
If the government shuts down, Schumer said, “communities that depend on government services to function will suffer and will suffer and suffer greatly.”
He also said allowing a government shutdown would be “a gift” to President Donald Trump and would empower his efforts in reducing the federal workforce and spending.
“As bad as a [continuing resolution] is, allowing Donald Trump to take more, even much more power through a government shutdown is an even worse option,” Schumer said.
He said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the administration would be granted far greater discretion to determine what constitutes an essential employee.
The stopgap funding legislation, passed by the House on March 11, would punt the deadline for government funding from March 14 to Sept. 30, aligning with the final day of the fiscal year. It increases defense spending by about $6 billion while cutting non-defense spending by some $13 billion.
The House’s near party-line passage of the bill—including defections from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who opposed it, and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who supported it—raised questions about its fate in the Senate, where most bills need at least 60 votes to overcome the filibuster and proceed to a simple majority vote.
Since then, Trump has encouraged rapid passage of the bill through the upper chamber, saying that any shutdown would lay at the Democrats’ feet.
“If there’s a shutdown, it’s only because of the Democrats—and they would really be taking away a lot from our country and from the people of our country,” Trump said from the Oval Office on March 13.
In the Senate, as in the House, several Republicans have historically opposed the concept of a stopgap funding bill—dubbed a “continuing resolution” in Capitol Hill parlance—on principle. Historically, as many as 15 to 25 Senate Republicans have voted against such bills, which are rarely able to pass without bipartisan support.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Senate’s most outspoken budget hawks, said that he plans to propose an amendment called the “DOGE 1.0” amendment, which would begin the process of instituting certain cuts related to foreign aid proposed by DOGE.
He described the current continuing resolution (CR) as “essentially identical” to the one passed in December 2024.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a longtime swing vote in the upper chamber, said she “hates” it.
“It is a choice between two untenable positions,” she told reporters. “Both of those positions are untenable.”
Schumer’s comments in favor of invoking cloture on the CR effectively guarantee that other Democrats will follow suit, enabling the legislation to achieve the cloture threshold of 60 votes and proceed to a simple majority floor vote.
Prior to Schumer’s speech, many Democrats remained critical of the package. Several have indicated that they’d prefer a 30-day funding extension followed by negotiations on the details of a larger CR package.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), often perceived as one of the upper chamber’s more moderate Democrats, called the bill a “partisan continuing resolution” and said that he would vote against cloture to “force a real negotiation.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said she is a “firm no” on the CR.
“Trump and Republicans set this up as an unprecedented power grab so they can slash and burn government services on their terms,” she posted on X.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said in a video posted on X that the bill is a “surrendering of the powers of Congress to the president and Elon Musk,” who leads DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts.
When asked by The Epoch Times whether the bill or a shutdown is worse from their perspective, Senate Minority Whip Durbin (D-Ill.) said, “Both [are] bad.”
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) described it as “a lose-lose situation.”
With Schumer’s support locked in, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will likely move now to rapidly bring the legislation to the floor, with a cloture vote expected on March 14.
It’s unclear how many other Democrats will follow suit with Schumer, but his backing will make it difficult for critics to block the legislation through the filibuster.
