Republican lawmakers fear Washington may be headed for a government shutdown later this year after two bruising fights over President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act and a $9 billion rescissions package created bad blood on Capitol Hill.
White House budget director Russell Vought says the administration plans to send up another wave of spending rescissions to Congress, and GOP leaders are already waving the caution flag on that as some Republicans privately warn it may not have the votes to pass.
After six months of bitter partisan fighting since Trump’s inauguration, Republicans will now need cooperation from Democrats to keep the government funded, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is warning GOP colleagues not to expect “business as usual.”
One senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee put the chances of a shutdown in the fall at “a real square 50-50.”
The lawmaker warned that if the White House sends up another rescissions package, “it will be met with mixed results.”
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“I agree with John Thune that we need to get to a regular appropriations process, and I think it gets in the way of that. So the timing, if they do another one, is going to have to be better timed and [have] much more detail,” the senator said, referring to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
The senator acknowledged Democrats are furious after getting steamrolled on the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act and the rescissions package.
“Who gets blamed for it?” the lawmaker mused.
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity said the odds of a shutdown are significantly higher after scorched-earth battles with Democrats on the Trump’s megabill, which cut nearly $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending, and the rescissions package, which defunded PBS and NPR and clawed back money from global aid programs.
“I think the Democrats are very unhappy,” the senator said. “You got some of them that are running for president, you got some of them that are running for majority or minority leader over there. So, I think they’re going to fight for us no matter what, and I think they see government funding as one of those places they want to fight.
“We’re already thinking and talking about what we do there,” added the lawmaker, who has participated in conversations with GOP leaders.
“We know that no matter what we do they’re ready to have that fight already,” the lawmaker added, referring to Democratic colleagues. “They’re going to want to fight.
“We’re talking about how we’re going to fund the government,” the source added.
Schumer came under scathing criticism from the left flank of his party in March when he made the controversial decision to vote for a partisan government funding package drafted by the House to avoid a government shutdown.
Schumer argued at the time that a shutdown would be worse than swallowing what Democrats saw as a highly partisan funding bill, because he said it would “give Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE and Russell Vought the keys to the city, state and country.”
He said a shutdown would give Trump and his allies “carte blanche to destroy vital government services” as the president would have “full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel ‘non-essential.’”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) suggested Democrats in Washington need to show more fight against Trump’s agenda.
“Frankly, a lot of our approval rating problems are from Democrats dissatisfied with our level of fight,” he said in reference to a recent Harvard-Harris poll of more than 2,000 registered voters nationwide that gave the Democratic Party a 40 percent job approval rating.
“I think that’s probably because we have not been showing the fight they expect,” he said.
That sets the stage for a bruising fight over government funding legislation this fall and the heightened possibility of a shutdown, lawmakers warn.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called the government funding bill that passed in March a “disaster.”
“We need a bipartisan process and Republicans were not committed to that in the spring,” he said.
After two knockdown, drag-out fights with Democrats over the tax and spending bill and the rescissions package, during which angry Democrats dragged out the proceedings into the night with delay tactics, Thune is ready to shift to the regular appropriations process, which depends on bipartisan cooperation.
Thune has hedged when asked how many additional rescissions packages he expects to take up from Vought, Trump’s controversial head of the Office of Management and Budget.
“It’s going to take 60 [votes] to fund the government,” Thune said. “My expectation is, at least I hope, we plan to move [appropriations] bills that will have cooperation from the Democrats.”
Asked whether there’s support in his conference to take up another rescissions package, Thune said: “We’ll see what the future holds, but I think right now the goal is to get into the appropriations process.”
“Let’s start marking up bills, trying to get them on the floor, and have a regular order appropriations process,” he added.
Senate Republicans familiar with Thune’s plans say he hopes to bring a package of appropriations bills to the Senate floor the week before the August recess.
That package would likely consist of the agriculture appropriations bill, the military construction and veterans affairs appropriations bill and possibly the legislative branch appropriations bill and the commerce, justice, science appropriations measure.
The senior member of the Appropriations Committee said the goal is to get that package and possibly another one or two passed before government funding expires at the end of September.
GOP senators are warning that if the White House budget office sends up another rescissions package to Congress this summer, it would likely throw a wrench into passing regular spending bills and avoiding a government shutdown.
“I really would like to have the rescissions being part of the appropriations package in the future,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Appropriations Committee.
“I’m going to counsel hard that they consider running them through the appropriations process,” he said of cuts the White House wants to make to certain government programs. “Strategically, if you want to do appropriations, you got to have 60 votes in the Senate and Democrats have to play a part in that.”