Democrats defeat Republican funding plan, taking government to brink of shutdown
The Senate Democrats on Tuesday voted almost in unison to defeat a House-passed bill to fund the government through Nov. 21, putting Washington on the brink of a government shutdown that could last for days or even weeks.
Democrats are jittery about how the likely shutdown will play out over the next several days after President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he would take “irreversible” actions to gut their priorities during a shutdown.
But they emerged from a long lunch meeting Tuesday with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) resolved to defeat the GOP-crafted funding bill, which they had previously rejected on Sept. 19.
The House measure needed 60 votes to pass, and it fell five votes short. Government funding expires at midnight, at which point a shutdown will begin.
Centrist Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) were the only Democrats to vote for the Republican-drafted measure, as did Sen. Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
Cortez Masto said she voted for the Republican funding bill because a government shutdown would hit Nevadans who are already dealing with high costs and an economic slowdown.
"This administration doesn't care about Nevadans, but I do. That's why I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration," she said in a statement.
Fetterman, the only one of the three who had voted in favor of the same bill earlier this month, warned that a shutdown could empower Trump to further slash federal programs.
“The president has a lot of levers he could pull,” Fetterman warned reporters on Capitol Hill.
He said a shutdown would “be the........
© The Hill
