Washington — Congress is barreling toward a deadline to avert a government shutdown in just over two weeks, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over whether there should be guardrails on President Trump’s ability to withhold funding approved by Congress.
Democrats want to insert language in the funding bill to ensure that the administration implements the spending directed by Congress, a reaction to Mr. Trump and top adviser Elon Musk’s work to downsize large swaths of the executive branch. But Republicans have made it clear that they won’t accept those terms.
Government funding expires on March 14, and keeping the government open past the deadline will likely require bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate, but a funding measure requires 60 votes for passage. In the House, Republicans are operating with a razor-thin majority and a divided conference in which conservatives regularly vote against government spending bills.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said Wednesday that a continuing resolution that funds the government at the current levels is the “most reasonable thing to do to ensure that the government is not shut down.”
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It has yet to be determined whether disaster relief for the California wildfires would be included in the funding measure, but Johnson told reporters it likely would not include language to codify cuts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the Musk-led task force that is slashing programs across the executive branch.
“It probably is as close to a clean CR as possible,” he said of the potential path forward.
Johnson’s comments came after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and Mr. Trump at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
But in an interview with CNN later in the evening, Johnson noted that the CR might include some “anomalies,” opening the door to spending cuts that would alienate most Democrats.
“You can increase some spending, you can decrease some spending. You can add language that says, for example, the dramatic changes that have been made to USAID would be reflected in the ongoing spending,” Johnson said. “It would be a clean CR, mostly, I think, but with some of those changes to adapt to the new realities here.”
Democratic leaders have said the blame for any shutdown would lie squarely with Republicans, who control the House, Senate and the White House. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said Tuesday that Democrats don’t want a shutdown and are at the table negotiating in good faith to fund the government.
“But Republicans are the majority in the House and in the Senate. If they want our votes, they need to work with us,” Murray said, noting that appropriators are “close” on topline spending.
“We need to know Republicans are willing to work with us to protect Congress’ power of the purse,” Murray said. “That is the absolute bare minimum, and it’s frankly not asking a whole lot.”
Republicans “should not follow Elon toward a shutdown,” Murray said.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Senate’s top Republican appropriator, and Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, her counterpart in the House, met with Johnson and Thune on Wednesday morning to discuss government funding.
Cole said he and Collins are on the same page, but do have differences with Democrats on “some of the restrictions that they’re demanding on what we consider legitimate presidential authority.” He added that Republicans are “not moving on that.”
“That’s a no-go, that’s a red line that we’re not changing our position on and they know that — that’s been communicated consistently,” Cole said.
Johnson said Democrats have “had completely unreasonable conditions assigned to this.”
“They want us to limit the power of the executive branch, they want us to stipulate in the appropriations bills for the first time in history that certain agencies in the executive branch would have to have a specific number of employees, all sorts of just unreasonable — what I think are unconstitutional — demands,” Johnson said. “It would be a violation of separation of powers. So we’re pretty far apart right now, but it is not because of Republicans, it’s because of the Democrats.”
The funding fight comes as Republicans in Congress have also been moving ahead on a separate budget resolution, which serves as a blueprint for approving Mr. Trump’s agenda on issues ranging from border security to energy and taxes. Though the two issues are distinctly separate, the focus on the budget has taken center stage in recent weeks, appearing to sideline progress toward government funding.
contributed to this report.
