WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats will end a standstill against their Republican colleagues to avert a government shutdown, allowing GOP leaders to move forward with their own funding plan that has not received any Democratic support.
After days of closed-door meetings with Democratic senators, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced on Thursday he would vote to end the filibuster, teeing up a vote for a six-month long continuing resolution (CR) that would extend government funding through the end of September. The reversal comes just one day after Schumer warned Republicans they did not have the votes needed to advance the bill.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “A shutdown would give Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE … the keys to the city, the state and the country.”
“I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” he added.
Despite holding control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans still have a math problem in the Senate. To overcome a filibuster, 60 senators must vote to invoke cloture on a piece of legislation — meaning at least seven Democrats would need to cross party lines to advance the measure.
In this case, Republicans need at least eight Democrats after Republican Sen. Rand Paul came out in opposition to the current CR proposal.
How will Utah senators vote on CR?
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is inclined to vote for the CR so long as it remains free of any provisions seeking to restrict the Trump administration.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, told the Deseret News Thursday there are still some variables he is considering but he is “certainly leaning toward a yes.”
It remains unclear how many Democrats will vote to invoke cloture, and a growing number said they would not do so as meetings dragged on Thursday.
More than a dozen Democratic senators vowed to oppose the funding bill when it’s brought to the floor, including Sens. Mark Kelly, Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, Ben Ray Lujan, Adam Schiff, and Elizabeth Warren, among others.
But after a tense closed-door lunch on Thursday — during which, reporters could hear Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand yelling at her colleagues about avoiding a shutdown — a few senators appeared to acknowledge some of their colleagues would push to end the filibuster.
“I’m not going to vote for the CR but I fully respect people who’ve come to a different conclusion,” Heinrich said.
The 11th-hour agreement offers a path forward, but it leaves little time for the Senate to get the funding bill through the upper chamber and on Trump’s desk by the midnight deadline on Friday.
The Senate is expected to vote for cloture on Friday morning, giving party leaders less than 24 hours to finalize a time agreement before a shutdown takes place. However, even if the CR isn’t signed by Trump before the midnight deadline, it would likely only result in a symbolic shutdown.
Consequences of a shutdown wouldn’t be felt until at least Monday, which is likely to be avoided if the CR is passed by the Senate on Friday and delivered to Trump over the weekend.
