Bracing for a Shutdown Fight, Democrats Warn Their Votes Are Not a Given

One month out from a deadline to avert a government shutdown, Republicans in Congress are struggling to find the votes to extend federal funding, and Democrats are issuing a stark warning: Don’t look at us this time.

After two years of coming to the rescue to keep the government running when Republicans could not get their own members to support stopgap spending bills needed to do so, many Democrats say they cannot in good conscience play that role again. President Trump’s drive to dismantle and defund programs Congress has authorized — coupled with his billionaire ally Elon Musk’s work through the Department of Government Efficiency to purge the federal bureaucracy — has soured their appetite for compromise.

“If Elon Musk and DOGE has found all of this fraud, and waste, and abuse — hundreds of billions of dollars, as they claim — well, then, we can’t fund the government by C.R. anymore,” Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, said in a floor speech this week, referring to continuing resolutions, the stopgap spending bills Congress normally passes to avoid government shutdowns.

Hard-line Republicans typically oppose such measures because they continue funding at the same levels rather than imposing cuts, and Mr. Moskowitz was borrowing their logic.

“The C.R. would re-fund all of that waste, fraud and abuse that DOGE has found,” Mr. Moskowitz added. “Which means the only way to fund the government is to fund it by individual spending bills.”

It was a devil’s advocate monologue aimed not only at explaining why Democrats should refuse to support a single measure that is needed to avert a government shutdown after March 14, but also tagging any Republican who does so as a hypocrite. And it reflected the divisions playing out among Democrats in Congress about how to position themselves in a looming spending fight that Republicans need their help to resolve.

Mr. Moskowitz gave his speech as bipartisan negotiations on a temporary spending bill have broken down on Capitol Hill, and Republicans and Democrats have begun the perennial pre-emptive blame game.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and minority leader, said Thursday that his side had been working in good faith to reach an agreement.

“House Republicans have chosen to walk away,” he said, adding that the G.O.P. had shown that any shutdown is “all on you.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, in turn, accused Mr. Jeffries of “trying to set up some sort of a government shutdown.”

In his speech, Mr. Moskowitz tried a different tactic, essentially adopting Republicans’ anti-spending argument in an effort to trap them with their own argument.

Proselytizing the benefits of single-subject spending bills, rather than one massive bill to fund the entire government, has for years been the hobby horse of fiscal hawks in Congress, outside influencers like Stephen K. Bannon and Russell T. Vought, Mr. Trump’s budget director.

Now, Mr. Moskowitz, a center-leaning Democrat best known in the House for his political stunts and flashy sneaker collection, said he thinks it’s the right message for Democrats in the age of DOGE.

He is pushing Democratic leaders to employ it in the coming weeks as the deadline for a shutdown draws nearer and Republicans with slim majorities are scrambling to find a way to keep the government open. Over the past two years, Mr. Johnson has been repeatedly forced to rely on Democratic votes to help him push through legislation to keep the government open, which many members of his own party refuse to support.

Not everyone agrees with Mr. Moskowitz’s tactics. Some of them are reluctant to promote the idea that Mr. Musk has identified any worthwhile cuts, even jokingly.

Others see a political upside in threatening to shut down the government, eager to telegraph to their progressive base that they are fighting against Mr. Trump’s unilateral moves to upend programs and fire civil servants. And still others, like Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and minority leader, continue to maintain that bipartisan work in Congress is possible and are presenting themselves as the responsible ones who will steer the government out of the mess, hoping to put the onus on Republicans if there is a shutdown.

“Democrats stand ready to support legislation that will prevent a government shutdown,” Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to his conference this week that perplexed many House Democrats who wanted to force Republicans to make assurances before offering their backing. “Senate Democrats will use our votes to help steady the ship for the American people in these turbulent times.”

One thing Democrats do agree on: With the G.O.P. in control of a governing trifecta, Democrats should not be blamed for any dysfunction.

“We don’t have any power to shut down the government in the minority,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, said in an interview. “We have to make that crystal clear.”

The dynamic was different in the last Congress, Ms. Jayapal noted, when Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate.

“Last time around, we had certain things that had been negotiated in the Senate and with the White House,” she said. “This time, they are not coming to us to negotiate anything.”

Late last year, Mr. Jeffries negotiated a spending deal with Mr. Johnson only to have him renege on it after Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk panned it and his conservative members revolted. Mr. Jeffries felt like any trust they had was broken, according to people familiar with his thinking, and that Mr. Johnson was not ultimately the decision maker in a Trump presidency.

In an interview Wednesday night, Mr. Moskowitz said that he was worried Republicans were setting a trap for Democrats and that he was trying to make sure party leaders like Mr. Schumer didn’t lead them into it.

“They want us to constantly defend the status quo and are setting us up to do that,” he said of Republicans. “We don’t want to close the government, but if the speaker of the House doesn’t start moving individual spending bills, the other choice is to go fund all the fraud and abuse they claim to have found.”

Over the weekend, the two Democratic senators from New Jersey, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, also floated the idea of using a potential government shutdown as a political tool to counter Republicans in power.

“I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing when it comes to this administration’s actions,” Mr. Kim said on “Meet the Press.” “For us to able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn around to dismantle the government, that is not something that can be allowed.”

Some Democrats said they thought it was too early to be making such statements. The Democratic Policy and Communications Committee sent an email this week to members describing the “do’s” and “don’ts” of talking about government funding.

“Do not suggest Democrats can or are making unilateral decisions on government funding,” the memo said. “Do not get caught up in discussing the process of funding the government, make specific demands, or downplay a government shutdown.”

As for the hard-right, Mr. Bannon, from his basement podcasting studio near the Capitol, has been playing Mr. Moskowitz’s floor speech repeatedly on his program, and has been enjoying the irony of the full circle moment that now has Democrats making his argument against huge temporary spending bills.

“The posse loved the searing logic of Moskowitz’s beat-down of the gross negligence of the Republican budget ‘process,’” Mr. Bannon said in a text message. “This nation is hurtling toward a financial crisis — and the political class does nothing.”