Senate Democrats today are likely to help advance a Republican 6-month spending bill hours before a shutdown deadline.
This comes after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday backed down from threatening to vote for a shutdown.
“I will vote to keep the government open and not shut down the government,” Schumer said in a March 13 speech on the Senate floor.
He said allowing a government shutdown would be “a gift” to President Donald Trump, saying it would “[allow Trump] to take more power through a government shutdown.”
The minority leader had said the day before that Senate Democrats would not vote for the funding bill passed by House Republicans.
The stopgap funding legislation, also known as a continuing resolution or CR, passed by the House on March 11, would punt the deadline for government funding from March 14 to Sept. 30. It cuts about $7 billion in spending, including a $13 billion cut from nondefense spending.
The House’s near party-line passage of the bill 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.
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. This time, most Republicans will likely vote for advancing the package, but a few are skeptical.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called the CR “essentially identical” to the one passed by Congress in December—a package he opposed.
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 “partisan” and said that he would vote against cloture to “force a real negotiation.”
At least one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has indicated support for the Republican CR, calling his party’s proposed alternative for a 30-day CR “total theater.”
When asked by The Epoch Times whether the bill or a shutdown is worse from their perspective, Senate Minority Whip Dick 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.
—Joseph Lord, Jackson Richman, Arjun Singh
MEDICAID IN THE CROSSHAIRS
Medicaid is at the center of a scrum between Republicans and Democrats, haggling over a spending plan for 2026.
Republicans are aiming to root out fraud and waste from the program.
Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to slash Medicaid funding. They want no changes to the $616 billion program.
The House passed a budget blueprint on Feb. 25 that calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and $4.5 billion in tax cuts.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that’ll mean cuts to Medicaid.
“Tonight, House Republicans passed a budget which steals taxpayer dollars from Medicaid to give tax breaks to their billionaire donors and big corporations,” Pelosi wrote on X.
Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House Democrat leader, said, “We have [Republicans] on the run in terms of health care—particularly as it relates to Medicaid,” on a March 5 leadership call.
A reporter asked President Donald Trump if the proposed spending cuts would include Medicaid.
“I have said it so many times, you shouldn’t be asking me that question,” Trump said. “We’re not going to touch it. Now, we are going to look for fraud.”
Is there enough fraud in Medicaid to make up the difference?
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis thinks so. The New York Republican highlighted hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent and improper Medicaid payments in a March 11 floor speech.
Democrat senators disagree. “Levels of abuse and waste within Medicaid are not commensurate to cutting billions from the program,” they wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to GOP leaders.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce oversees Medicaid. The committee is looking for $880 billion in savings over the next 10 years.
That’ll mean some reduction in Medicaid spending according to data from the Congressional Budget Office. Medicaid accounts for 97 percent of the committee’s spending purview.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he won’t consider putting a per-capita cap on Medicaid payments to states or cutting their reimbursement rate. The feds now pay 50 percent to 76.9 percent of states’ Medicaid costs.
One idea is still on the table: closing a tax loophole that allows states to tax health care providers, pay the money back to them in increased Medicaid payments, and thereby increase the amount of federal reimbursement the states receive.
Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) hasn’t said what the Energy and Commerce Committee will do.
Johnson has said he hopes to pass a budget reconciliation bill, the vehicle by which Republicans intend to fund the government in 2026, by Easter, April 20, or by Memorial Day, May 26, at the latest.
—Lawrence Wilson
BOOKMARKS
U.S. District Judge William Alsup has ordered the Donald Trump administration to reinstate thousands of fired employees. He ruled that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) exceeded its authority by ordering the workers be let go.
Trump is still confident that the United States will acquire Greenland, saying the country is needed “for international security.” Trump said he is in discussions with Jens Frederik Nielsen, the head of Greenland’s newly-dominant Demokraatit Party.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on March 13 that he agrees with the terms of a cease-fire with Ukraine, but only if “it would lead to long-term peace and would eliminate the original causes of this crisis.” In the past, Putin has said he wants Ukraine kept out of NATO, and wants to prevent foreign troops from being stationed there.
Canadian professor Joanna Howe is speaking out against an amendment that would expand abortion access in the Australian state of New South Wales. “This bill significantly widens ministerial power and has the potential to force the closure of Catholic hospitals who do not want to perform abortion because it ends the life of an innocent human child in-utero,” she said.
A coalition of attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, is suing to stop the Trump administration from laying off large numbers of employees at the U.S. Department of Education. The agency has announced that about half its workforce has resigned or been laid off, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said she would like to close it entirely.
—Stacy Robinson
