Spending showdown looms after Senate defeats House budget patch

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate on Friday shot down a Republican stopgap budget that would keep the government funded through November as lawmakers continue hashing out full-year spending legislation.

The measure, which narrowly passed the House just hours before, was skewered by Democrats who said Republicans had once again moved to cut them out of budget talks. Its failure hiked concerns of a government shutdown as a fiscal deadline looms at the end of the month.

The proposed budget patch, commonly referred to as a continuing resolution, would largely keep funding for government programs flat through mid-November — a move Republicans say is aimed at buying Congress more time to reach consensus on a spending plan for the 2026 fiscal year. The continuing resolution also includes a $30 million line item providing extra security for lawmakers following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and restores roughly $1 billion in federal cash for Washington, D.C., omitted from a stopgap budget approved in the spring.

And much like Congressional Republicans did with the six-month continuing resolution passed in March, they advanced this most recent patch without input from the chamber’s Democratic minority, once again incensing party leadership.

“My Republican colleagues have once again chosen a partisan route,” said Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “The president said … pass this Republican continuing resolution, jam it down the Democrats’ throats. That’s the direction that the president would like to take us.”

President Donald Trump, who supports the Republican-led continuing resolution, has said that his congressional colleagues should not “bother” negotiating with Democrats on the measure.

House Republicans didn’t need any Democratic support to pass the budget stopgap in the lower chamber, just to win over a few dissenting voices among the GOP’s usual cast of spending hawks. The measure passed in the House on a thin 217-212 margin.

But the Senate — where the resolution will need 60 votes to pass — is a different story.

The question for Democrats is now whether they will risk potentially taking the political blame for a government shutdown if they refuse to get on board with another Republican budget steamroll. Facing a similar conundrum in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer chose to cross the aisle and back a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through the end of September.

This time, however, the top Senate Democrat has so far held firm in his opposition. Speaking to Punchbowl News on Thursday, Schumer said the current situation was “different in many different ways,” suggesting that Republicans and Trump are in a weaker political position than they were six months ago.

“[T]he Republicans have shown who they are,” said the New York Democrat, pointing to the GOP’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” and Trump’s tariff policy as issues on which they’ve done “so much harm” to Americans.

Senate Democrats proposed an alternative continuing resolution which would also extend subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and walk back Medicaid cuts inked as part of the “Big, Beautiful” legislative package — poison pills for Republicans.

Republicans shot down that counteroffer Friday.

Schumer has said the Senate should immediately vote on both the House-passed continuing resolution and the Democratic alternative. Republicans haven’t been keen on that idea. Both chambers of Congress are on recess next week for the Rosh Hashanah holiday. The Senate will not reconvene until Sept. 29.

If lawmakers fail to pass some sort of budget stopgap by Sept. 30, which appears possible, a government shutdown would be imminent. Democrats, between a rock and a hard place, have insisted that Republicans would be solely to blame for any shutdown.

“We have heard all year how Republicans have a mandate, how Republicans have the presidency, how Republicans control the House, how Republicans control the Senate,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Friday. “Well, if that is the case … Republicans will own a government shutdown, period, full stop.”

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