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Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said Wednesday that Democrats will reject government funding bills that Republicans will write and pass in the House.
The House on Tuesday narrowly approved a continuing resolution to maintain funding for the government until the end of September.
“While funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, Republicans chose a partisan path and drafted their ongoing resolutions without input from Congressional Democrats. So Republicans are not voting in the Senate to call House CR coagulation,” Schumer said on the floor, calling for a one-month fundraising bill that would provide more time to negotiate the deal.
“Our caucus is unified with a clean April 11 CR that gives Congress time to negotiate bipartisan laws that can keep the government open and pass,” he said. “We hope that our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid Friday’s closure.”
He spoke after a luncheon between Democrats on Wednesday. They tore whether or not they would vote for the House six-month measure, but some worried that the closure would be even worse, even if they widely disapproved the House bill.
The government will close at the end of Friday without a new funding law signed by President Donald Trump, who approved the House Act. Republicans manage 53 Senate seats and need 60 votes to defeat the Filibuster.
“There are no votes to hand it out right now,” D-Va said. Sen. Tim Kane, of the group, told reporters after the meeting. “The Democrats had nothing to do with this bill, and we want an opportunity to get an amendment vote or two, and that’s what we’re asserting.”
Still, some Democrats fear that the closure is worse than accepting the bill, even if they have no opinion on creating it.
“Frankly, both results are bad,” D-Ga said. Sen. Rafael Warnock told reporters Wednesday. “There are consequences for elections, but this is an extreme bill. If it passes, it will hurt many ordinary people on the ground. If the government is shut down, it will hurt many ordinary people on the ground, and that is the dilemma we have found ourselves.”
“And the more, the problem I have with the bill is that I think we’re going on with this project that comes from this glove of power that doesn’t respect the power of the wallet in Congress,” he said.
Outside the room where Democrats held their luncheon, reporters could hear the senators make a great assertion to their colleagues as they tried to resolve the issue with two outcomes the party had no interest in.
“I’m weighing the bad options for each,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz, who didn’t take the bill’s position.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said he supports StopGap’s funding bill because it is more desirable than government shutdowns.
Many Senate Democrats said they hope the one-month bill will close work on new spending contracts. Others said they have disapproved of the House bill’s boost to military spending and cutting domestic programs across the country. And others say they want a guardrail on Elon Musk’s power to dismantle the government without Congressional approval.
D-Minn. Sen. Tina Smith said Democrats are “uniformed by not wanting to shut down governments, and all we have to do is vote in the short term.”
However, Republicans have little desire for a one-month action and will step down to a continuing resolution throughout the fiscal year ending September 30th. The White House could focus on billions of dollars Republican-only bills to pressure the party to separate the issue from the plate and promote Trump’s legislative territories on borders and other policies.
House Republicans passed a six-month government funding measure in a nearly party-affiliated vote between 217-213. and Senator Rand Paul, R-KY. , as a company, it would require at least eight Democrats to beat the filibuster in the Senate.
Some democratic senators and aides are worried that supporting the bill will set a bad precedent. They will effectively tell House Republicans that they can write government funding measures without Democrats at the negotiation table.
“That’s also one of the issues we’re facing here,” Kelly said.
Senate majority leader John Tune, Rs.D. said he is open to having conversations with Senate Democrats about the amendment vote on the Short-Term Suspension Funds Act.
“I think they’re still trying to figure out if they want to see this summary right now,” Thune told reporters. “But in the end, the vehicles we can use — and the houses are gone — the government is funded by CRs coming from home.”
The house is on a break and there are no plans to return to Washington until March 24th.
Another Senate Republican said it was too late to change the bill now.
“The problem is, if we pass here, the house will be gone and closed on Friday,” R-Texas Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday. “So I don’t think there’s an amendment vote for short-term CRs. It could be wrong.”
Time ran out soon. The Senate cannot vote for the bill by late night deadline Friday unless all 100 senators agree to skip the hurdle.
“At least for now, I’m not watching the vote. Based on reading the end of the meeting, I’m not watching the vote there now because I lost a House Republican,” Sen. Bill Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told reporters Wednesday.
Republicans are betting that Democrats have no desire to allow the shutdown despite their disagreement with the House bill.
Sen. Ben Ray Lejean of DN.M., has denounced House Republicans for separating Democrats from the process and said they will blame the potential shutdown.
“Republicans are in charge of the Senate, they are in charge of the House, they have the White House. Americans know who is in charge,” he said. “It’s ridiculous that Republicans try to blame the party, which is a minority everywhere.”
Meanwhile, during a retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, House Democrats urged Senate colleagues to block the bill. All but one, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, voted against the fundraising bill on Tuesday.
“We’re asking Senate Democrats to vote no on this ongoing solution, but that’s not pretty. It’s going to be cut down on the whole,” said Rep. D-Calif. “And that will be one of those people are seeing this vote and now all the bad things happening in Doge and Donald Trump, Elon Musk, you can go back to this vote.
NBC News’ Kate Santalis, Gabriel Basconcelos and Scott Wong contributed.
This story first appeared on nbcnews.com. More from NBC News:
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