![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/missouriindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/johnthunesept192025-1024x768.jpg\")
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U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt\/States Newsroom)<\/p>\n
This report has been updated<\/em><\/p>\n WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Senate deadlocked Friday over how to fund the government past a deadline at the end of September, escalating the odds of a shutdown and heightening tensions on Capitol Hill.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats on a 44-48 vote <\/a>blocked a seven-week stopgap spending bill that had passed the House just hours earlier, refusing to aid Republican leaders in getting the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation.<\/p>\n Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both Republicans, voted against the bill, while Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman voted for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republicans on a 47-45 vote<\/a> blocked a Democratic counter-proposal, a one-month stopgap bill that included several health care provisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters ahead of the votes that Democrats can either accept the GOP-drafted stopgap bill or shut the government down. President Donald Trump told Republicans they did not need to negotiate with Democrats on the legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe choice is pretty clear. It\u2019s going to be funding the government through a clean, short-term continuing resolution or a government shutdown,\u201d Thune said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the choice the Democrats have. The House has acted. The president\u2019s ready to sign the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Complicating matters is the congressional calendar, which has both chambers out next week for Rosh Hashanah. The Senate\u2019s not scheduled to return until Sept. 29, with less than 48 hours to broker a deal and get it to Trump\u2019s desk.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thune said he\u2019s not inclined to bring senators back early, despite the impasse.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say it\u2019s unlikely we\u2019ll be in next week but, obviously, you never completely shut the door,\u201d Thune said.\u00a0<\/p>\n House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters following his chamber\u2019s vote on the stopgap he hadn\u2019t decided whether to reconvene the House earlier than planned.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of discussion about it,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThe members have a lot of work to do in their districts as well, and so we try to balance those interests.\u201d<\/p>\n House Republicans announced later in the day the chamber wouldn\u2019t come back until Oct. 1, essentially jamming the Senate with the GOP bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democratic leaders have vowed not to help Republicans get the votes needed on their current stopgap \u2014 a stark contrast from March, when Senate Democrats did just that, leading to significant frustration from their House colleagues.<\/p>\n The stalemate and congressional calendar have\u00a0ratcheted up the odds<\/a> of a protracted, deeply political government showdown that could last for weeks or even months.\u00a0<\/p>\n Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said during floor debate the only path away from a shutdown runs through bipartisan negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy aren\u2019t they willing to just meet and actually start charting a course on how we move forward? I think the main reason is Donald Trump,\u201d Murray said. \u201cHe told Republicans, \u2018Don\u2019t even bother dealing with Democrats.\u2019 It seems like Republican leaders are just afraid to cross the aisle and have a simple meeting, a mere conversation, if it risks losing Donald Trump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Murray said that approach to governing will have significant consequences for major legislation, which requires the support of at least some Democratic senators to advance in a Senate with 53 GOP members.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo to get things done for our families back home, Republicans need to work with Democrats,\u201d Murray said. \u201cAnd if Republican leadership cannot find the courage to do that on what should be low-hanging fruit here, if they can\u2019t sit down with our Democratic leadership to talk about a short-term CR, what does that mean for the work that we\u2019ve been doing for our full-year spending bills? What does it mean for extending those health care tax credits? And what does it mean for any of the other challenging issues we would all like to work on together to address?\u201d<\/p>\n Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters it\u2019s \u201cmalpractice\u201d and \u201cbananas\u201d that GOP leaders don\u2019t plan to shorten or cancel the break.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m hearing is that we\u2019re not here next week. Like, are you kidding me?,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cYou have all the evidence you need that Republicans want a shutdown \u2014 A, they refuse to negotiate and B, they\u2019re sending us home for the week before the government shuts down. This seems like a planned shutdown as far as I can tell.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s zero effort \u2014 zero \u2014 by Republicans to try to solve this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. House Republicans passed the seven-week stopgap government funding bill earlier Friday.<\/p>\n The\u00a0217-212 vote<\/a> represents the second time this year the House approved what\u2019s called a continuing resolution on a predominantly party-line vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden was the only member of his party to support the bill. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz were the only Republicans to vote no.\u00a0<\/p>\n House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the stopgap spending bill is needed to give lawmakers more time to pass the dozen full-year government spending bills and called it the \u201cresponsible path.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are certainly moving forward productively and a bipartisan, bicameral agreement is firmly within our grasp,\u201d Cole said. \u201cWe just need more time to sustain negotiations and complete our work. That\u2019s why we\u2019re here today.\u201d<\/p>\n Cole said that not approving a stopgap bill before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1 would lead to a shutdown and hinder those talks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLet me be very clear, a shutdown would do nothing to help our work on full-year bills or to support the American people,\u201d Cole said. \u201cSo if you want stability for the American people, if you want time to negotiate in good faith and if you want regular order, you\u2019ll support this CR. Any other vote would be reckless, not just for both parties but for the entire nation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the committee, said Republicans\u2019 decision to write the stopgap bill on their own signaled they weren\u2019t actually interested in bipartisanship and that it \u201creflects a broken political system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey would rather shut down the government than sit down and talk with Democrats about lowering costs for millions of Americans, preventing people from getting kicked off their health care and stopping President Trump and budget director Russ Vought from stealing from our communities and from our constituents,\u201d DeLauro.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s unilateral actions on spending, she said, are making work on government funding more complicated, since Democrats cannot trust the White House budget office to implement the laws as written.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis administration continues to freeze, to terminate and cancel $410 billion in commitments to families, to farmers, to children, to small businesses and communities in every part of our country,\u201d DeLauro said. \u201cBillions of these commitments will soon be lost forever if Congress refuses to rein in this administration\u2019s illegal actions.\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans\u2019\u00a091-page stopgap spending bill<\/a> would fund the government at current rates through Nov. 21, giving lawmakers more time to complete work on the full-year appropriations bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n That bill, which was\u00a0released Tuesday,<\/a> includes $30 million to reimburse local police departments that provide security for lawmakers when they\u2019re back in their home states, $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service for \u201cExecutive Branch protective services\u201d and $28 million to bolster security for U.S. Supreme Court justices.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019 counter-proposal, released Wednesday, would fund the government through Oct. 31 and permanently extend the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.<\/p>\n The legislation would reverse many of the health care proposals Republicans included in their \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d law, including substantial changes and funding cuts to Medicaid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019\u00a068-page bill<\/a> would bolster security funding considerably more than the GOP proposals. An additional $30 million would go toward mutual aid agreements with local and state police departments that provide security for members in their home states, $90 million would be provided for House security programs, and $66.5 million for the Senate Sergeant at Arms.\u00a0<\/p>\n There would be an additional $140 million for the federal courts, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Marshals Service.<\/p>\n Stopgap spending bills have been a relatively routine and bipartisan part of funding the government for decades, until this year when Republican leaders drafted the legislation on their own.<\/p>\n Democrats have said consistently that if GOP leaders don\u2019t work with them to draft a bipartisan stopgap, they cannot expect Democrats to vote for the final product.\u00a0<\/p>\n The stalemate, which has to do with the process as well as significant policy differences, appears likely to lead to the first government shutdown since 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n A funding lapse this year, however, will impact much larger swaths of the federal government than that 35-day shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n When that impasse began, Congress had passed five of the dozen full-year government funding bills, meaning that anyone working for Congress or in the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Veterans Affairs wasn\u2019t impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lawmakers have yet to pass any of the appropriations bills for the upcoming fiscal year, meaning every department and agency that makes up the federal government will have to decide which employees work without pay and which are furloughed if a shutdown begins.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those plans\u00a0have been public in the past<\/a> and appeared on the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s website, but\u00a0no guidance was posted<\/a> as of Friday afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The White House budget office did not respond to a request from States Newsroom about whether it intends to post agency contingency plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Friday\u2019s final vote, senators rushed out to catch flights back home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a wrap,\u201d GOP Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said as he walked off the Senate floor.<\/p>\n Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin brushed past reporters and declined to answer questions, saying she had to catch a flight back to Michigan.\u00a0<\/p>\n GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota exited the Capitol together.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the two walked to cars waiting for them just outside the Senate, Ernst told Klobuchar to enjoy her break and the Minnesota Democrat added that she hoped Republicans and Democrats could work together during the brief recess.<\/p>\n Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a press conference that he was dumbfounded by Republicans\u2019 actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still a little flabbergasted that they couldn\u2019t generate a majority for their own proposal and that we\u2019re just over a week from a potential government shutdown,\u201d Schatz said. \u201cAnd I am more than a little flabbergasted that the House just decided after a six-week recess to take another recess and come back after the end of the federal fiscal year.\u201d<\/p>\n Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines said during a separate press conference with GOP leaders that Democrats were bending to the demands of their voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThink about where we were the last time there was a CR to keep the government open, and Chuck Schumer voted for it,\u201d Daines said. \u201cWhat happened? The radical left attacked Chuck Schumer, and now today, he has yielded to the radical left that seeks a government shutdown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt\/States Newsroom) This report has been updated WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Senate deadlocked Friday over how to fund the government past a deadline at the end of September, escalating the odds of a shutdown…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n ![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/missouriindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/senaterepublicans-scaled.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>Shutdown appearing more likely<\/h4>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>House passes bill<\/h4>\n
A \u2018broken political system\u2019<\/h4>\n
Republican and Democratic alternatives<\/h4>\n
No negotiations<\/h4>\n
Senators depart the Capitol<\/h4>\n
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