Senators brace for another government shutdown after spending talks stall

Senate Senators brace for another government shutdown after spending talks stall Comments: by Alexander Bolton - 06/24/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Alexander Bolton - 06/24/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Senate Republicans and some Democrats fear another government shutdown is looming this fall after bipartisan spending talks sputtered this week, forcing Republicans to cancel the markup of four appropriations bills scheduled for Thursday.

Republicans think Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is angling for another showdown over government funding right before the midterm election, just as he and other Democrats forced a big fight last year over the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies.

“I think my Democratic friends at the direction of Sen. Schumer are not going to agree to a top-line [spending number] and they’re not going to agree to vote for any appropriations bill, and Sen. Schumer is going to shut down government,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

That concern has grown on Capitol Hill after negotiations between Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel, stalled.

Collins canceled a markup of four bills on Thursday, as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is absent this week because of a health issue and she couldn’t count on Democratic votes to pass the bills out of her committee.

It’s a jarring difference compared with last year, when the Senate Appropriations Committee approved many of its annual spending bills with strong bipartisan support.

But with the midterm election only a few months away, the atmosphere in Congress has changed dramatically.

“Last year was not an election year,” Kennedy noted.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations panel, said, “Democrats want to shut us down.”

“Hopefully we can solve the problem,” she said. “There’s no support on the other side.”

Democrats say another shutdown is possible, but they assert it would be Republicans’ fault because they’re in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he thinks another government shutdown could be on the table for the fall.

“These guys are the Keystone Cops. They don’t know how to run the government, so a shutdown is always possible,” he said.

Democrats are already pointing the finger at Republicans for the failure to reach an agreement on the defense and nondefense spending top lines.

Schumer last week accused Collins, who is a top Democratic target in this year’s midterms, of refusing to meet with Democratic negotiators, something that Collins strongly denied.

Senior Democrats on Tuesday said Republicans are pushing for a much bigger increase for defense spending than for nondefense spending.

“The ratio of four-and-a-half to one, the increase in defense over nondefense. We think that’s way out of line,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the second-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations panel.

A Republican aide said the Democrats’ characterization of the negotiations is misleading and asserted Collins has made an “extremely reasonable” offer to which Democrats have responded with an “extremely unreasonable” counteroffer.

Many Democrats thought they won last year’s battle when they forced a record-setting 43-day government shutdown to highlight rising healthcare costs and Republican opposition to extending enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

This has led some Republican senators, such as Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), to push their leaders to have a messaging strategy to blame Democrats for a possible third government shutdown so that the GOP doesn’t pay a political price for the dysfunction in Washington.

A partisan dispute over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations caused a 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year.

Scott circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter Monday urging Republican colleagues to begin laying the groundwork for a government shutdown battle in September and October.

“Democrats have been clear that they want to shut down government on October 1st because they believe that is their path to a majority in November,” he wrote, calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other GOP senators to rally around a stopgap measure to fund the government from Oct. 1 through the November election.

“We need to make it clear to all Americans that Democrats want to shut down government and don’t care how it impacts federal workers or the economy and Republicans want to fund the government,” Scott wrote.

Scott is pushing for Senate Republicans to schedule votes on bills sponsored by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) to ensure essential federal workers are paid during a shutdown and to provide continuing appropriations during a funding lapse as a means of avoiding shutdowns in the first place.

Lankford’s bill would also limit official travel and congressional recesses during a shutdown or partial shutdown.

Senate Republicans plan to discuss their political strategy in case of an October government shutdown during a meeting with President Trump in the Capitol on Wednesday.

Scott, who chairs the Senate Republican Steering Committee and invited Trump to Capitol Hill, said he discussed with the president on Friday the need to have a plan.

“My view was we know the Democrats are going to shut down government, so we’re going to have to have a plan,” Scott said, recounting his conversation.

Collins on Tuesday said she would prefer that Congress make more progress on the annual appropriations bills instead of defaulting to a continuing resolution (CR), which would freeze spending levels and wouldn’t make programmatic changes, so early in the process.

But she acknowledged that a stopgap may be the best way to avoid another shutdown.

“We’re going to need a CR for part of government. I would still like to see us pass some of the appropriations bills. Four of them have been worked out in a bipartisan way,” she said, citing bills to fund the legislative branch, military construction and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, and Veterans Affairs.

“My preference would be to proceed with those bills and try to get them across the floor and to conference and to the president,” she said. “CRs create a lot of problems.”

But she said the talks with Democrats aren’t going well.

Asked about the possibility of another shutdown, Collins said: “I certainly hope not, but we’ll have to see. So far the negotiations are ongoing … but I would not describe them as going well.”