WASHINGTON — As the clock ticked down to a potential government shutdown this week, Democrats across the country believed they had finally found solid ground on which to fight President Donald Trump and the Republicans who control Congress.
The GOP had rammed a stopgap spending bill through the House that would cut billions of dollars from crucial services and empower Trump and his allies to slash government spending without Congress’ approval — all without bothering to negotiate to get bipartisan support, the Democrats argued.
In the Senate, the Democratic Party — routed from power in last year’s election — finally had a say. The upper chamber’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to let a bill come to the floor, would be their weapon to stop the spending bill in its tracks and let the minority party exercise meaningful power for the first time in the second Trump administration.
That is, until their own leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, put that weapon back in its holster.
Mr. Schumer’s surprise decision to join Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and vote to allow the bill to come to the floor — and his claim that he rounded up enough of his colleagues to ensure the bill’s success — has ignited a fierce intra-party fight over whether the Democrats’ aging leadership is up to the task of fighting an ascendant GOP that is remaking the federal government with unprecedented speed.
“This is a signal to the American people that Democrats will not fight for them,” Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, posted on X Thursday night after Mr. Schumer’s announcement that he’d vote to advance the GOP stopgap measure.
“We have to be using our votes for leverage right now. To protect the social services folks are asking us to. To invest in our communities. Otherwise Republicans will just keep running us over.”
House Democrats — even those in vulnerable districts where Trump performed well in November — voted in near unanimity against the spending bill earlier in the week. Many of them took the rare step of publicly castigating Mr. Schumer after he announced that he would vote to break his own party’s filibuster of the bill.
Those Democrats had “held the line in a close vote on the GOP blank check bill,” Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Pa., said on X Friday morning.
“We’re ready to vote again if the Senate passes something better,” he said. “Sen. Schumer, you may ultimately fall short but people expect us to TRY, at least. What is the filibuster for, if not this?”
Until Mr. Schumer’s announcement on Thursday, Mr. Fetterman had stood alone against his party’s strategy of blocking the funding bill and allowing the government to shut down. Mr. Fetterman’s characteristic independence comes as he’s bashed Democrats’ attacks on Trump in recent weeks.
“We shut the government down to make a statement,” Mr. Fetterman wrote in a Friday morning post on X mocking Democrats itching for a fight. “Set the chaos into motion as it continued to spiral. Millions of lives damaged, many without a paycheck. The Eureka! Moment: GOP owns the only exit ramp.”
Many more Democrats — from progressives to moderates and, especially, younger members of the party — have publicly come out against the Republican plan. They argue it’s stripped of the typical congressional funding guidance that could keep Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) more in check as the administration aims to gut federal agencies.
But Mr. Schumer, D-N.Y., says he’s rounded up at least six more Democratic votes beyond him and Mr. Fetterman — enough to reach the required 60-vote threshold to advance the Republican bill, which the House passed in a largely party line vote, 217-213, on Tuesday.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Thursday night characterized Mr. Schumer’s decision as a “full cave” — a sentiment ruefully shared by a growing chorus of Democrats.
Despite the GOP’s control of almost all the levers of power in Washington, Republicans “craftily shifted the political blowback of a shutdown to the Democrats in the Senate,” Lew Irwin, who teaches politics and government at Duquesne University, told the Post-Gazette Friday morning.
“If you control the presidency and the Senate and the House and the government shuts down, the American public blames you. But they backed Democrats in the Senate into a corner,” Mr. Irwin said.
Mr. Schumer faced “two bad choices,” Mr. Irwin said.
On the one hand, Democrats could have been blamed for a shutdown.
On the other, “you authorize the government to continue under Republican priorities and give away the only leverage — literally the only leverage — you have other than the upcoming debt ceiling vote,” he added. “I think in this case Republicans outplayed Democrats.”
‘Minimize the harm’
Mr. Schumer argued on the Senate floor Friday morning that letting the Republican spending plan move forward “is the best way to minimize the harm” Trump can do.
“A shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” he said.
Trump himself congratulated Mr. Schumer — whom the president has often denigrated — for the “guts and courage” to vote in favor of the GOP plan.
“Really good and smart move by Senator Schumer,” Trump said on Truth Social Friday morning. “This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning!”
Democrats, especially progressives in the House and Senate, are venting their frustrations.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. — who in December lost a fight to the more senior Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, enraging progressives — continues to press Democratic senators to stand firm against Trump and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, even if it means a shutdown.
“Republicans’ partisan spending bill turns the federal government into a slush fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” she told CNN Thursday night. “It’s unthinkable that any Senate Democrat would hand them a blank check.”
“[House Democrats] from the toughest seats in America stuck their neck out to protect people,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said this week. “[The] Senate needs to fight.”
Rep. Chris Deluzio, whose Western Pennsylvania district is more competitive than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s or Ms. Lee’s, called the House package “garbage” on Tuesday, and said he and other Democrats remain willing to work on a bipartisan deal.
“Our party needs more of a fighting spirit,” Mr. Deluzio told The New York Times. “This is not a normal administration, and they’re willing to do dangerous things.”
Debate inside the party
The public infighting has laid bare a long-running debate within the party about how hard — and how often — to fight Trump and the GOP majorities that voters sent to Washington.
Top Democrats in the Senate have gone back-and-forth over whether they’d “play hardball” with the administration and GOP-controlled Congress, and the drama over the shutdown is the latest example, Mr. Irwin said.
That question is particularly pressing for more centrist Democrats and for “a guy like Mr. Deluzio who has won handily and done well in carving out solid wins that’s masked the fact that [the 17th congressional district] is a pretty balanced district” Mr. Irwin said. The district covers all of Beaver County and parts of Allegheny County.
“That vote could come back to [House Democrats] as they’re up for re-election,” he said. “The AOCs of the world have progressive priorities, but House Democrats in total are concerned that they’re forced to take hard votes that the Senate is getting mushy on. House Democrats would rather that the Senate Democrats signaled to them what they were going to do ahead of time.”
J.J. Balaban, a Philadelphia-based Democratic strategist and admaker, told the Post-Gazette earlier this month that Mr. Fetterman faces a tougher vote than his more progressive colleagues, in part because he represents a state that’s almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
Others in Mr. Fetterman’s caucus have come out far more aggressively against the Trump administration. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., encouraged Democrats to act like a “true opposition party” — one that refuses to confirm Trump Cabinet nominees or advance partisan legislation.
That approach is at odds with how Mr. Fetterman has played his hand. He stood out as the lone Democrat to back Pam Bondi’s confirmation as attorney general, the lone Democrat to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in January, and he has consistently launched attacks against his own party’s messaging as being losing politics.
Mr. Murphy said in a video posted on Instagram Thursday that the Republicans’ stopgap funding bill makes it easier for Trump to execute a plan to destroy the American economy and government to “create a crisis,” hand the keys of Washington to “his billionaire friends” and “suspend our democracy.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who represents another closely divided state and was on the fence on the House-approved spending plan, announced Thursday that he’d cast a “no” vote. The measure is “designed” to give the world’s wealthiest man — Musk — and DOGE “more influence, more power,” he said.
The filibuster debate
For parties out of power, the filibuster has emerged as a potent tool to block legislation that’s supported by the majority. As its use has become all but routine in recent decades, critics say it has ground government to a halt at times as the minority exerts its will in defiance of the majorities that the country voted to empower.
“There shouldn’t be a filibuster,” Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at Duquesne University, told the Post-Gazette.
The framers of the Constitution didn’t want the procedure to be used for ordinary spending bills, he said.
“Now it’s just like we routinely need 60 votes. Why? The people in the United States are entitled to an effective government,” Mr. Ledewitz said.
Asked what recourse the Democrats have other than denying a vote on the Republican plan, Mr. Ledewitz said: “None.”
“But they should say to the voters, ‘Look at the nonsense you voted for,’” he said. “‘[Republicans] are responsible for everything, so everything that goes wrong is their fault.’”
‘A new budget blueprint’
Republican appropriations leaders note the measure funds veterans’ healthcare services and benefits, raises pay for federal wildland firefighters, adds $753 million in funding for air traffic control systems, and ramps up nutrition assistance to mothers, infants and children in the WIC program by $500 million as requested by the Trump administration.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, the chief deputy whip, urged the Senate to pass the bill, which he called “paramount in our effort to institute President Trump’s America-first agenda and continue rooting out waste, corruption and abuse.”
Democrats argued that the bill could lead to the administration choosing to shift previously approved funding focused on combating fentanyl, including substance abuse and mental health programs, or disease and vaccine research, to other priorities such as “mass deportation initiatives.”
Mr. Irwin told the Post-Gazette that the spending plan is not a true continuing resolution.
“It’s actually a new budget blueprint,” he said, that “authorizes increases and decreases in spending for various programs and departments.”
He said that neither party is as interested in policy as much as the implications for the 2026 midterm elections at a time when the “juggernaut of Trump and Musk is making some pretty radical changes in how the executive branch operates.”
“Let’s say the U.S. Navy has received appropriations for four new attack submarines, but when they look ahead in the next budget year, they figure out they don't need four attack subs, but they do need new technology to deal with machine learning and artificial intelligence and to expand the drone fleet in Navy aviation,” Mr. Irwin said.
“Well, when you govern the way Republicans and Democrats have been for some time [with short-term spending bills], under those rules the Navy’s going to buy those four subs whether they need them or not, and not going to have new monies for emerging threats,” he said.
“This is bad policy,” he added. “The way we’re running this government now is irresponsible.”
First Published: March 14, 2025, 9:05 p.m.
