In Washington, Senate Democrats are facing a difficult decision: defeat a House Republican spending plan and allow a government shutdown to take effect this weekend, or allow it to pass and give President Donald Trump a free hand to continue his deep staffing cuts across federal agencies.

“I'm worried that the Senate will just roll over. I hope that's not the case,” Rep. Mike Levin said in an interview with Spectrum News. “Hopefully they understand the CR gives carte blanche to DOGE, to the administration to keep working through Elon Musk to cut whatever they want.”

Levin and many of his fellow Democrats are urging their colleagues across the building to stay the course, with many California Democrats pointing out the stop-gap measure has no wildfire assistance, something they say their constituents desperately need.

What You Need To Know

  • Congress appears to be inching toward a government shutdown after Sen. Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday that there were not enough Senate Democrats to pass the Republican-led stop-gap measure passed by the House

  • The House narrowly passed a government funding measure Tuesday mostly along party lines, with one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, supporting the bill and one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voting against it

  • House Democrats are encouraging their Senate counterparts to hold the line and vote to reject the measure

“It's an awful bill. It's going to hurt my constituents, it's going to hurt California. It doesn't have a dime of money for fire relief in it. I would expect Democrats in the Senate to do what Democrats in the House did and show a united front and reject this terrible bill,” Rep. Laura Friedman said. 

Republicans have called this a “clean CR,” a bill which maintains spending at current levels. Democrats argue this bill is not “clean” because while it largely maintains spending at current levels, it includes a $6 billion increase for the Pentagon and a $13 billion cut in domestic spending. All but one House Democrat voted against the bill Tuesday because they argue the bill would do nothing to reign in Trump and his ally Musk from continuing to slash funding across federal agencies.

It also does not include protections for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, a nonstarter for most Democrats. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass. went as far to say yesterday that if protections for those three programs had been in the legislation, Democrats would have backed it. Instead, she argued that the stop-gap measure was “a blank check to [the U.S. Doge Service] to keep on DOGE-ing and taking a chainsaw to the very programs that American families are saying they want us to protect.”

The Senate would need eight Democrats to cross party lines and vote in favor of the measure to advance the bill to the president’s desk. On Wednesday, both of California’s Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla announced they would not support the measure, and a short while later Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced there were not enough Democrats to get the bill across the finish line. 

“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but 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,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th 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.”

With the House out of session until later this month, it puts the government closer to a shutdown. Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain telling reporters Tuesday before the House left town that the chamber had done its job, and now it was up to the Senate.

“If the Democrats want to shut the government down, then let them shut the government down. This can be a Schumer shutdown. That's up to them,” she said.

“The Republicans control the executive branch, the Republicans control Congress. Any shutdown is on them because they were unwilling to come to the table and, in good faith, negotiate a bipartisan spending deal,” countered Friedman.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said he would vote in favor of the bill, chiding his own party for putting the country one step closer to a shutdown.

“I am unwilling to vote to shut the government down,” Fetterman said. “It wasn’t that long ago that we were scolding Republicans who were threatening to shut the government down.”

Congress has until midnight Friday to pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown.