Senate Democrats are raising the threat of another government shutdown in late January as tensions with President Trump escalate over a series of recent maneuvers by the White House that Democrats say need a forceful response from Capitol Hill.
Senate Democrats walked away from a potential deal to fund a broad swath of the federal government, including the departments of Defense, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services, which make up roughly two-thirds of the discretionary budget, before Congress adjourned for the Christmas recess.
Democrats cited Trump’s threat to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a leading government-funded center for atmospheric and climate research, as the reason they couldn’t advance a five-bill spending package before Christmas.
Had the legislation passed the Senate this past week, it would have given Congress a good chance of funding up to 85 percent to 90 percent of the federal government through September of next year and taken the threat of another shutdown off the table.
Instead, the shutdown threat remains very much alive, even though Democrats aren’t yet revealing their strategy ahead of the Jan. 30 government funding deadline.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who was involved in negotiations to get the spending package through the Senate, said that Democrats want to preserve their “leverage” by keeping the threat of another shutdown on the table.
“They want some leverage for the end of January,” Hoeven told The Hill, adding that he got the sense that Democrats weren’t ready to pass the funding package, even if funding for the atmospheric and climate center in Colorado didn’t blow up into a major issue.
Senate Democratic progressives aren’t ruling out the possibility that they will attempt to use the next funding deadline to demand major concessions from Trump.
“I’m not going to speculate,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who added that Democrats want to pass the regular appropriations bills but will wait to see what happens over the next several weeks.
A Democratic senator who requested anonymity to talk about the likelihood of a shutdown said that passing the five-bill spending package, which stalled in the Senate Thursday, would be critical to avoiding a shutdown.
The failure to advance the measure is a red flag warning that the chances of a shutdown are growing, lawmakers say.
Senators left Washington for a two-week Christmas recess without even reaching an agreement on voting on amendments to the funding package when they return in January, which means that Senate consideration of the legislation could be delayed until late in the week of Jan. 5 or later.
A second Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss party strategy said the White House seems to be goading Democratic senators to trigger another shutdown.
The lawmaker said White House budget director Russell Vought’s announcement on social media Tuesday that the administration would move to dismantle the atmospheric and climate research center — which provides data critical to assessing climate change — was a serious affront to Democrats, and the timing of it destroyed any chances of passing the funding package before Christmas.
“If you’re trying to get something done you don’t throw a stick of dynamite into the process. The president’s people shouldn’t have thrown a stick of dynamite into the process. If I was Sen. Collins and Sen. Thune, I’d be furious at the president, because he just threw a grenade into the middle of the process,” the Democratic senator said, referring to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said that Trump’s threat to shut down the national atmospheric research center had undermined Democrats’ trust that the administration won’t make other attempts to cancel federal funding appropriated by Congress.
“It was pretty clear that kind of the trust [was impacted]. Like, if they’re going to do this right on the eve of advancing appropriations, what else should be worried about?” she said, describing the shift in sentiment among Democratic colleagues after Vought announced the administration’s plans to dismantle the atmospheric and climate research center.
A Republican senator who requested anonymity to talk about sentiment within the GOP conference warned that the Senate may be walking into another shutdown.
The senator warned that if the five-bill appropriations package doesn’t pass the Senate in early January, that would likely set up a partisan standoff shortly before Jan. 30 and predicted that Democratic lawmakers will come under pressure from their left flank to force another shutdown.
“If we don’t pass it, then we’re going to walk into a potential government shutdown,” the lawmaker warned. “If we pass this, we will have funded 87 percent of the government.”
Many Democrats on Capitol Hill saw the October-to-November shutdown as a political success.
It put Democrats’ top issue of health care costs at the top of the national political agenda, and most voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown. Trump’s approval rating dipped, and Democrats increased their lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot during the 43-day standoff.
The other bombshell that came from the White House Thursday was a decision to rename Washington’s premier preforming arts center to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts — another unilateral move without any consultation with Congress.
Democrats say there are an array of other issues they want addressed before agreeing to fund the government beyond January.
These include assurances that Trump will not plunge into a war with Venezuela and that his administration will release all unclassified documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Friday accused the Justice Department of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed overwhelmingly last month.
Democrats are also still pressing for an extension of enhanced health insurance premium subsidies that will expire at the end of the year, resulting in more than 20 million Americans seeing substantially higher health care costs next year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says Democrats will continue to fight for an extension of the enhanced health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.
She said opposition from Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is the biggest obstacle to prolonging the enhanced subsidies.
“The hard part here is whether the Republican leadership is willing to move the bill [to extend the subsidies] along,” Warren said. “In the House, you can do a discharge petition but not over here [in the Senate] and so far Leader Thune has said he is not bringing a bill like this to the floor.”
Thune told reporters before leaving town for Christmas that Congress may default to considering a yearlong continuing resolution next month to avoid a shutdown in February. But that would set the stage for the House attempting to jam Senate Democrats again with a partisan stop-gap funding measure — something that happened in March and again in September of this year.
