Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democrats face a critical choice on how much to work with Republicans on government funding when Congress returns next week — with a government shutdown and anger from their voters hanging in the balance.
Senate Democrats took a beating from their base during the last funding showdown in March, when they helped pave the way for Republicans to pass a GOP-crafted plan to keep the government open through early fall, averting a shutdown in the eleventh hour.
As Congress prepares to return to a monthlong sprint until the funding deadline, pressure will be on Schumer to hold his ground and tensions could significantly heighten.
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday called on their GOP counterparts to “immediately meet” once Congress returns from recess next week to discuss the need to avert a shutdown, while pressing for their proposal to “fund the government in a bipartisan manner.”
They also pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for plans to address what they described as a “looming healthcare crisis,” while criticizing Trump’s tax and spending bill, which includes funding cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps.
The letter additionally asks about the administration’s plans for another package to claw back previously approved funding. Republicans earlier this year used the maneuver to push through billions of dollars in cuts to foreign aid and public media funds without Democratic support — enraging Democrats who questioned how they could work with the GOP going forward.
“The government funding issue must be resolved in a bipartisan way. That is the only viable path forward,” they wrote.
The Hill has reached out to Thune and Johnson’s offices for comment.
The letter comes after Democratic leaders said their Aug. 4 letter requesting a bicameral meeting of the “Big Four” leaders was unanswered.
Some Democrats have voiced frustration in recent weeks that the party is not using its leverage enough to fight back against a president that they argue has taken up an unlawful agenda to shrink parts of government without congressional approval.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) drew attention last month after he sharply criticized his Democratic colleagues, whom he accused of “willing to be complicit to Donald Trump” and going along with a president he argued is “eviscerating the Constitution of the United States of America, and we’re willing to go along with that today.”
“I have to stand against this. It is a violation of our Constitution for the president of the United States to ignore the will of Congress and decide which states are eligible for grants and which are not,” he also said then.
Booker was asked after his remarks on the floor whether his view on Democrats fighting extended to next month’s funding showdown.
“There are a lot of senators right now, that we are looking at the tactics we can take to be far more effective in the fight, and there’s a lot of big fights coming up, and my sleeves are rolled up, and I’m ready to do whatever is necessary to try to start defending Americans who are seeing their health care costs go up, their energy costs go up, they’re losing their health care as well as on top of all of that, the Constitution is being undermined from freedom of speech to due process to freedom of press,” Booker told reporters.
Asked about the outcome of the March funding fight, when Democrats folded in a clash with Republicans to help prevent a shutdown, Booker also reiterated his opposition against the measure and stressed the need for the party to unify “in a tough fight” for Americans.
“I am saying right now that I am doing everything I can to try to unite the Democrats in a very strong, tough fight that will protect Americans who are really getting hurt right now,” he said. “I think what Americans, not Democrats, what Americans need right now is people in the Senate who are going to stand and fight for them, and that is my intention, and to try to make sure that more and more of us are standing together.”
Lawmakers are expected to pass a stopgap of some kind to keep the government funded at the start of fiscal 2026 on Oct. 1 to buy Congress more time to hash out a larger funding deal for most of next year.
Both chambers are running behind in crafting their 12 annual government funding bills. The Senate has passed three across the floor so far, compared to the House’s two passed spending bills. The funding committees tasked with assembling the legislation in both chambers also have yet to send out all 12 funding proposals for floor consideration.
The batches of legislation that have come from both chambers so far arrive in sharp contrast from the other.
House Republicans cut overall spending in their funding legislation below current levels, with a roughly 6 percent cut to nondefense programs, and a host of legislative riders Democrats have already decried as poison pills. The Senate bills are more bipartisan in nature, enjoying, in most cases, strong support from both sides of the aisle in committee, as Republicans acknowledge Democratic support will be necessary in the upper chamber to pass the funding legislation.
Some Democrats are pushing for the party to continue to work with Republicans to hash out their annual funding bills, viewing the bipartisan legislation as their best chance to have more input in how the government will be funded.
Democratic appropriators have also pointed to “tightened” language in some of the legislation crafted in the Senate that they have described as a way to fight back against Trump’s spending moves.
“We’re tightening in our language requirements that staffing levels at the Department of Education need to be sufficient to meet their missions and that they cannot outsource some of their key missions to other agencies or departments,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) — the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees funding for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services — told reporters last month of the legislation she helped craft for the agencies.
“It’s to support staffing levels necessary to carry out their statutory responsibilities, including carrying out programs funded in the appropriations bill in a timely manner,” she explained. “It also includes extensive and very detailed staffing reporting requirements.”
But the Trump administration’s months-long government reshaping operation, along with a recent GOP-passed measure last month to approve some spending cuts, have weighed down the fragile bipartisan talks as tensions rise in Washington.
Before senators left for recess this month, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a senior appropriator, reiterated his stance to reporters on voting against bipartisan funding bills in committee this year.
“I’ve obviously been the lone ‘no’ vote in the Appropriations Committee on these budgets, because I don’t understand how we can trust that any of the agreements we make are going to be adhered to by an administration that is acting illegally every single day,” he said.
“I don’t think the bills we’re voting on are actually what’s going to happen,” he said, later asking, “How can you write a bill if they are literally just picking up money for X and using it on Y?”
This story was first posted at 6 a.m. and updated at 8:48 a.m. EDT.
