GOP lurches toward shutdown as Democrats vow they won't be rolled

Source: The Hill

09/04/25 6:00 AM ET


Democrats are taking a much tougher stance on the looming deadline to keep the government open than they did earlier this year, warning there will be a shutdown if Republicans attempt to jam them with another partisan stopgap funding measure from the House.

Spurred on by disgruntled progressives who want to see more fight from them, Democrats are breathing fire after President Trump thumbed his nose at Congress last week by proposing a pocket rescission, which would allow his White House budget director to rescind $5 billion in previously appropriated funding without any input from Capitol Hill.

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Wednesday that Democrats are willing to negotiate bipartisan bills but warned “if House Republicans … go a different route and try to jam through a partisan CR without any input from Democratic members of Congress,” they may not have enough Democratic votes to keep the government open.

“That is a Republican shutdown,” she said. “There is no reason for Republicans to walk away from this table, not after the progress we made this summer,” she said, referring to the bipartisan appropriations bills passed out of the Senate Appropriations panel. Murray urged Republicans to “ignore” Russell Vought, director of the Office and Management and Budget, who is pushing a pocket rescission to claw back $5 billion in funding from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5484944-democrats-tough-stance-government-shutdown/