The Senate approved a House GOP-crafted spending bill hours before the shutdown deadline Friday evening, capping off the first funding fight of President Trump’s second term — a saga that ripped apart the Democratic Party.
The legislation funds the government through Sept. 30, boosts defense funding by $6 billion and imposes $13 billion in cuts to nondefense funding. Trump is expected to sign the measure, having previously endorsed it.
The political fallout over the measure is reverberating the most among Democrats, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) facing fury from much of his party over his decision to provide the votes necessary for the measure to get through the Senate.
Here are five takeaways.
Johnson succeeds in jamming Schumer
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) set the tone for this week’s shutdown showdown, unveiling the stopgap Saturday, selling it to his conference Monday and muscling it through his razor-thin majority Tuesday.
Then, he sent the House home, jamming the Senate with the bill and leaving Democrats with the choice of opposing the measure and shutting down the government, or swallowing the legislation to keep the lights on in Washington.
In the end, enough Democratic senators chose the latter at Schumer’s behest.
Passage of the stopgap in the House marked a major victory for Johnson, and a feat that would have been inconceivable in years prior. The Speaker, with help from a Trump lobbying campaign, managed to get nearly his entire conference — all but one member — on board for the stopgap, despite long-held reservations to continuing resolutions among conservative fiscal hawks.
“I spoke with @POTUS earlier today. Voting for a CR goes against every bone in my body, but I am placing my full trust in the President’s long-term commitment to getting our fiscal house in order,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) wrote on the social platform X after the vote.
And the successful effort paid dividends, giving Johnson a platform on which he could pressure Senate Democrats to support the bill — and warn them that if they blocked it, they would bear the blame for a shutdown.
“The House has done its job and passed a clean CR to fund the federal government,” the Speaker wrote on X ahead of the Senate vote. “If Senate Democrats block an up-or-down vote on this, then it’s crystal clear: THEY want to shut down the government. Period. Full stop.”
Chaos among Democrats
Since November, the Democratic Party has struggled to find its way, trying to pick up the pieces from last year’s disastrous elections and searching for a message — and leader — to combat the Trump administration.
That quest took another step backward during this week’s funding fight, with chaos — and infighting — escalating.
Take, for example, the top two Democrats on Capitol Hill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) voted against the spending bill, urged his caucus to do the same, then mounted an intense campaign encouraging his Senate Democratic counterparts to follow suit. Schumer, meanwhile, disregarded those calls, voting to advance the stopgap and bringing nine of his colleagues with him.
The tension between the two Brooklynites spilled into the public view Friday when Jeffries declined to back up his Senate counterpart, dismissing a pair of questions about Schumer’s leadership.
“Next question,” Jeffries told reporters.
The anger in the Democratic Party, however, is far wider than just the Schumer-Jeffries chasm, with many in the base — largely progressives, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — up in arms over Schumer’s decision to back the spending bill.
Schumer takes an arrow — and draws the ire of progressives
Perhaps no one had a more difficult week on Capitol Hill than Schumer, who was left with no good options when he spearheaded a group of 10 colleagues to join with Republicans to avert a shutdown, angering many Democrats and progressives in the process.
The group — largely composed of leadership members, looming retirees and those in battleground states — joined with Republicans to pass the bill.
Most other Democrats directed their anger at Schumer.
“There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters late Thursday, referring to Schumer’s decision. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board — the entire party.”
Schumer is going to face questions going forward over whether he can successfully lead Senate Democrats against Trump. He also may need to think about the prospect of a primary challenge from Ocasio-Cortez in 2028.
For first time in recent memory, a totally partisan funding bill has passed
Government spending bills take many shapes and sizes, from short-term continuing resolutions (CRs), to massive one-bill omnibuses, to the hybrid creatures that occupy the middle ground, known as minibuses.
But in recent decades, there’s been one constant surrounding every funding bill that became law: It’s always been crafted by leaders in both parties and approved with bipartisan support.
Until now.
The bill approved by the Senate on Friday was crafted by Johnson and House Republicans without any input from Democrats. And it included roughly $13 billion in spending cuts that Democrats would never have agreed to in bipartisan talks.
Such a scenario was unthinkable in years past. Partisan spending bills crafted by former Speakers John Boehner (R-Ohio) or Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), for instance, might pass through a GOP-led House but would have no chance of eluding opposition from Schumer’s Democrats in the Senate. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) faced a similar obstacle in the form of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the former GOP leader who would never allow a liberal spending bill through the upper chamber.
The break from tradition this week infuriated the minority Democrats, who demanded a return to bipartisan talks and were leaning on Senate Democrats to use the filibuster to block the one-sided GOP bill and force Republican leaders back to the negotiating table.
“When you’re in the minority, you only have a few real points where you can use the powers that you have — the procedural moves that you have — to do the right thing by people who are terrified of where this country is going,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, said shortly before the Senate vote.
“So, back to the negotiating table? Why is that some wild-eyed idea? Let’s come back together.”
Schumer, by opting against the filibuster that serves as the Democrats’ single greatest instrument of leverage, declined to force GOP leaders to take that step. He feared that, with Trump in the White House, Republicans would instead let the country slip into a shutdown, perhaps long-term.
Americans will never know if he was right, since the bill is set to become law. Equally unclear is whether the Republicans’ successful one-sided strategy has ushered in a new age of partisan spending bills, or if it was another anomaly unique to the Trump era.
Democrats fear slippery slope in deciding against fight
Democrats in the Senate essentially decided against a drawn-out fight with Trump and the GOP by providing the votes to move the measure through the upper chamber.
Republicans were ready to blame them for a shutdown, reasoning that the bill had passed the House and had majority support in the Senate. A filibuster led by Democrats was the only thing preventing the measure’s passage.
Yet progressives were itching for a fight, arguing Republicans hold all the power in Washington and would have been blamed for a shutdown. They also said Democrats were willing to back a 30-day measure to continue talks with Republicans who had shut them out of negotiations on the funding measure.
Voters and the Democratic base, some progressives said, would be upset Democrats weren’t taking the fight to Trump.
“They want to hear that the Democrats are willing to fight back. … We cannot throw away opportunities. We just can’t afford it,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said. “Our opportunities are very limited. We need to use each and everyone of them to the fullest extent possible.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pointed to a provision targeting the District of Columbia’s funding that he said partly explained his “no” vote.
“If it was $1 billion this time, why wouldn’t they put $2 billion [in] next time? And what are we going to say? $1 billion was OK, but $2 billion is too much?
“The problem with normal, it always gets worse, right?” he continued. “You normalize something, then it gets worse.”
