Still locked out of power in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his party are seizing on a fresh battle with President Donald Trump: A high-stakes gamble over this month’s government funding deadline.
With a shutdown on the line, Schumer and other top Democrats in Congress are vowing to play hardball against Trump. One of the party’s biggest demands: They want Republican leaders to commit to billions of dollars in enhanced Obamacare subsidies that would otherwise expire at the end of the year.
“Donald Trump would rather shut down the government than even talk to Democrats about lowering the cost of health care for Americans,” Schumer told reporters on Friday.
But by taking that hardline approach, Democrats are also taking a major political risk.
Party leaders and rank-and-file are publicly projecting a united front, and many Democrats are truly eager for a fight with Trump. But behind the scenes, some are also worried about the party’s exit strategy if Trump and the GOP refuse to cave. They fear that a shutdown could wreak havoc across the country — only for Democrats to ultimately yield to Republicans with nothing in exchange.
One Democratic lawmaker close to leadership acknowledged that the party is heading into uncertain territory with its shutdown threat, but said there were simply no other options.
“I can’t tell you if it’s gonna be a good play or a bad play on shutting it down,” the Democratic member said. “The point is, nothing else has worked to stop their momentum. You gotta throw some tacks in the road.”
Others in the party are more anxious about what happens if Trump and his administration begin yanking resources like food stamps and blaming Democrats for the lapse. “There’s no way to play this shutdown game and win,” one senior aide to a Democratic centrist added.
A funding lapse on October 1, of course, isn’t yet guaranteed.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate believe Schumer wants to find an off-ramp, according to multiple GOP sources. Some Democrats, too, still publicly and privately hope that Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune can reach a deal on the enhanced subsidies, even if it’s not formally included in a funding agreement, multiple Democratic sources said.
Some saw Friday’s Senate votes sinking both Democratic and Republican plans as leverage points — rather than real shutdown threats — with so many days to go before the deadline.
“A government shutdown is not good for everyone. No one ever wins and the American people fail,” Rep. Ami Bera, a centrist from California, told CNN. “I wouldn’t make plans on [September] 29 or 30 because we might be back.”
But Republicans insist there’s no reason to have a conversation over health care at all as part of this funding bill, which would simply keep the government operating at status quo through late November.
“Looks to me like it’s this or a shutdown,” Thune said plainly when asked about Democrats’ choice.
“These guys just didn’t listen to the voters last November,” House GOP Whip Tom Emmer added of Democrats’ health care demands.
Schumer’s next play
Lawmakers left Washington on Friday without a clear path forward.
Both sides remained dug in with no plans to vote again until a day before the deadline, and no one on Capitol Hill can predict what happens before then. But for now, Democrats are leaning into their spotlight moment and insist they’re not backing down.
“Donald Trump says he doesn’t want to talk. He’s still in the go-to-hell mode. His marching orders to Republicans are don’t even bother with Democrats,” Schumer told reporters on Friday, after he and nearly every Democrat in Congress opposed the GOP’s plan for a seven-week stopgap. “They, by not negotiating, are causing the shutdown.”
It’s a notable position for Schumer, who triggered fierce backlash in his party this spring by helping Trump and Republicans keep the government open without anything in return. This time, he said, “the world is totally changed,” and the American public has “seen the damage the Republicans are doing.”
Republicans still need at least seven votes in the Senate on any funding bill and Democrats say they won’t back the current GOP funding plan. Republicans, meanwhile, say they have no reason to offer anything else.
“We’ll continue to talk to the Democrats. But I think you could very well end up with a closed country for a period of time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday. (Democrats, however, say Trump isn’t talking to them at all.)
Schumer has faced intense pressure inside the Capitol not to yield this time, including from his House counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Many in the party, including Jeffries, see the funding fight as a chance to take a high-visibility stand against Trump and his policies with the whole nation watching closely, according to people familiar with his thinking. A shutdown is bad, they say, but this is their only real leverage point with Trump.
“It’s the Republicans’ shutdown. We’re fighting for the health care of the American people,” a forceful Jeffries declared from the Capitol steps on Friday, surrounded by dozens of his members. “We will do that today. We will do that tomorrow. We will do that next week. We will do that next month. We will do that this year. We will do that next year.”
Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont argued Trump and the GOP have broken years of precedent by refusing to engage with Democrats on a bipartisan funding bill. While he was adamant that he doesn’t want to see a shutdown, he added: “In every other situation we’ve had here, there’s been a negotiation. … It’s a new world with Trump, and he probably does want a shutdown.”
Asked about the GOP’s insistence they will only put up a status-quo funding bill, he said: “That’s today. We’ll see.”
If Schumer and Senate Democrats were to accept a side deal on the Obamacare enhanced subsidies — without putting it into a funding law — it would likely infuriate House Democrats.
Many in the party remain distrustful of Schumer after the party-wide reckoning in March, when he yielded to Trump on that earlier funding bill. Schumer and Jeffries have insisted publicly they are in full alignment this time, but even close confidantes of both leaders say they can’t predict what happens next.
“I think he saw the consequences [of] what happened to him in March,” Rep. Ro Khanna told reporters, when asked if Schumer would hold the line on the funding bill.
Asked the same question, progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, declined to answer: “You’d have to ask Mr. Schumer.”
One senior Democrat who speaks to both party leaders regularly said it’s unclear whether Schumer can hold the position: “We hope so. We don’t know.”
Some House Democrats are working behind the scenes to keep up the pressure on the New York senator. In one instance, a report that said progressive force Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is considering a primary run against Schumer surfaced the morning of the Senate’s big funding vote. (Asked by CNN, Ocasio-Cortez would not comment on whether she is considering a run in the 2028 primary.)
For now, both sides acknowledge there’s no clear way out without a big U-turn by one party, but they’re also quick to place the blame.
“What we’re asking for is super reasonable,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said. “Republicans refuse to negotiate with Democrats, they’re sending us home next week. It’s 100% clear they want a shutdown.”
CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.
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