US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on February 27, 2025 in Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON – The federal government will partly shut down next month if Congress doesn’t act, and Democrats are debating how best to use their leverage to stop Elon Musk and Republicans from unilaterally freezing spending, dismantling government agencies and laying off federal workers.

Democrats want assurances from the White House written into the government funding bill that it will actually be implemented rather than ignored as the Trump administration has done with billions of dollars in foreign aid, climate and other spending.

“We have seen this administration disregard a lot of things. Absolutely, Congress needs to weigh in on how we want funding spent,” Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told HuffPost on Thursday.

Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee that is negotiating over the March 14 funding deadline, has argued for weeks that the GOP can’t expect Democrats to help them fund the government and then turn around and allow the Trump administration tear up their agreement.

But how could a new law constrain an administration that’s already ignoring the laws on the books?

“The law is the law. I’m not sure what, like, a new super-law would do,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost.

Republicans, meanwhile, maintain “poison pill” provisions like the ones Democrats are seeking ought to be left out of the talks as negotiators make progress on an agreement........

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