All eyes are on Senate Democrats after Republicans on Tuesday passed a continuing resolution, a measure that would temporarily fund the government but which paves the way for President Donald Trump to seize even more of Congress’s constitutional authority.
Republicans passed their continuing resolution and dubbed it a “clean CR” despite the fact that it contains $13 billion in spending cuts and increases the military budget by $6 billion.
The bigger problem, however, is that in order to force the CR through the House, Vice President JD Vance promised Republican lawmakers that Trump and his administration would pursue impoundment, an illegal method of budget cutting in which the executive seizes Congress’s power of the purse by refusing to spend money appropriated by a coequal branch of government.
The situation has left Senate Democrats with a decision to make, given their ability to stop the passage of the CR through the Senate with a filibuster, which would require 60 votes to defeat. Democrats can either vote for cloture and allow the Senate to pass the CR, effectively endorsing Trump’s impoundment plan, or they can invoke the filibuster and refuse to lend votes to the GOP, which would likely lead to a government shutdown.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told CNN that “I’m gonna vote against what came over from the House Republicans to the Senate last night because I don’t want to give my vote to support what Trump and Musk are doing.”
“I do think there’s real risks to a government shutdown so I respect those who are saying they are concerned that President Trump will go even further if we hand him that possibility,” Coons said. “But what’s come over. which is often called a ‘clean CR’ in the talk of the Congress, is not clean, it’s dirty. It’s got lots of provisions that will make cuts and harm organizations and communities all over our country.”
As Salon reported, in the event of a government shutdown, the executive branch has considerable authority over which agencies are kept open and which are not. Trump could use this authority to, for example, furlough the employees who send out Social Security checks. Musk, though he stands to be further empowered by either a shutdown or further impoundment, has expressed support for a shutdown, potentially for this reason.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., has voiced concern about Trump’s ability to choose who is furloughed in a shutdown, telling CNN’s Manu Raju that “If you shut down the government, the president is the person who decides what is essential. He decides what part of the government stays open, so you are actually giving him even more power.”
“Who knows how long it stays shut down? Who knows how long the president decides that he liked making all the decisions for the government. You can imagine him saying, ‘Congress has failed, Congress can’t help you. It’s up to me to save everyone.’ And then we can’t reopen the government without Republicans,” Hickenlooper said.
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