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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
As tensions mount, top Democrats seek to avoid another ugly clash over
government funding
By Sarah Ferris, CNN
Updated:
2:05 PM EDT, Wed September 10, 2025
Source: CNN
Top House Democrats have privately coalesced around a strategy in this
month’s high stakes government funding fight: A public battle with to
extract health care wins, even if it means a government shutdown.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries plans to formally articulate
their stance to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Wednesday evening
when the two New Yorkers and their leadership teams meet to discuss the
looming deadline. Jeffries sees this as a critical moment for Democrats
to seize attention from Trump and demonstrate their party’s values to
a frustrated American public, according to multiple people familiar
with his thinking.
But it’s not yet clear if Jeffries and House Democrats’ can sell
their hardline views across the Capitol, even as many in the party
vividly recall how Schumer was vilified by their base this spring for
helping to pass Trump’s funding bill without major concessions. A
growing number of Democrats now fear the two chambers are once again
headed for a messy clash over how to handle a rare chance to force
Trump and the GOP to the negotiating table, according to interviews
with nearly two dozen lawmakers and senior aides.
“If the Senate Democratic leadership doesn’t believe that we are in
an abnormal situation with an administration that is violating the
constitution and moving this country toward autocracy, then they need
to wake up. Because this is the world we’re in right now. And we need
to stand firm against it,” Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado told CNN,
summing up a view among many House Democrats.
“This sh*t is not normal and I’m not going to act like it is and
I’m sure as hell not going to be a part of it.”
So far, Jeffries and Schumer are saying little publicly about their
plan and Republicans have not yet settled on their own strategy to
avoid a shutdown come October 1. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson can
pass a spending bill without Democratic votes if he can keep his
fractious conference together. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune
will need at least a handful of Democrats to keep the government open.
Schumer on Wednesday signaled that Democrats would not accept a
take-it-or-leave-it GOP funding bill and criticized both GOP leaders
for refusing to meet with their Democratic counterparts to discuss
keeping the government open.
“We’ve heard nothing for weeks. The Republican silence is
concerning because if they think Democrats are going to show up at the
last minute to bail them out with the clock approaching zero, that
would be a big mistake on their part,” Schumer said.
In a nod to Jeffries’ position, the Democratic Senate leader told
reporters that “Democrats have always said we need to meet the needs
of the American people, particularly when it comes to costs and health
care costs. Leader Thune needs to sit down with us and negotiate a
bipartisan bill that meets these needs in order to get something to
pass.”
Schumer said he is “on the same page” with Jeffries and that they
agree a funding measure “needs to be a bipartisan bill with real
Democratic input.”
Among House Democrats, tensions are rising as lawmakers grow concerned
that GOP leaders and Trump will again attempt to jam them with a bill
that offers no concessions for their votes, even as some in the party
acknowledge they have no plan to avoid a prolonged shutdown if Trump
refuses to acquiesce.
Multiple House Democrats used a private meeting this week to vent their
frustration at Senate Democrats as they urged Jeffries to force their
colleagues across the Capitol not to yield to Trump again, according to
multiple attendees. (Schumer and others have argued that a prolonged
shutdown with Trump in charge would have been a far worse outcome.)
In the meeting this week, some Democrats read aloud from a New York
Times opinion piece from liberal columnist Ezra Klein that portrayed
the government funding battle as essentially of the Democratic Party
and said helping supply votes to the GOP is “complicity” with
Trump’s regime.
The discussion also centered around exactly what to demand from
Republicans. Jeffries and his team plan to focus on restoring the
GOP’s cuts to Medicaid and the end-of-year deadline to extend
subsidies for 22 million people getting their insurance from the
Affordable Care Act marketplace. Jeffries himself stressed to members,
they need to pick a battle that’s clear and winnable, telling the
room: “If we’re going to lean into the fight, we need to win the
fight,” according to a person in attendance, adding that Democrats
are “ready to lean into a fight about health care and beyond.”
That’s a fight that key Senate Democrats are willing to dig in on,
too.
“We want a budget, a bipartisan budget that restores some of these
cuts made to health care across the country,” Sen. Mark Kelly told
CNN when asked about Democrats’ position in the upcoming funding
fight. Kelly said there are 300,000 in Arizona who could lose their
health insurance because of the loss of the ACA subsidies or other
policy changes.
Asked if there’s a deal to be made, Kelly said: “Our Republican
colleagues know what they need to do. They need to restore this
spending.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin added in a this week that Trump needs to negotiate
to secure Democrats’ votes.
“One of the things the president can do in order to make this a real
conversation is walk back some of the cuts to Americans’ health
care,” Slotkin said, pointing to Medicaid cuts, ACA subsidies and his
cuts to government medical research funding.
In a brief interview with CNN, Slotkin declined to elaborate on her
position but added it is “very important” for the Senate to avoid a
repeat of March.
Six months ago during the last funding fight, 10 Democrats ultimately
helped GOP leaders pass Trump’s funding bill. Some of those Democrats
who opposed the bill then said their party has learned the lessons from
that bitter fight — and point to Trump’s unilateral actions on
spending cuts and immigration raids as further reasons to stand up
against a deal this time around.
“We’re not going to retrace what happened in March. It was a
different situation. I think we’ve learned from it. Since then, the
president has, in effect, exercised illegal authority to stop certain
funding. That’s a lesson for all of us, if we don’t insist that he
follow the law, we lose our democracy,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal,
who opposed the stopgap funding bill back in March and said he would do
the same this time without major concessions from the GOP.
“I’m talking to my Democratic colleagues. I don’t think we’ve
reached a consensus,” Blumenthal said.
“Nobody wants a shutdown. I don’t want a shutdown for its own
sake,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “But if it happens it will be
the result of Republicans, not us. But we have to be fighting.”
Asked if the party would apply any lessons from March to this funding
deadline, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the
Democrats, told CNN it’s “something we’re talking about” but
added it’s “a little bit premature” with the deadline still three
weeks away.
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