15 Mar 2025

Ten Democrats and Independent Senators Help Republicans Pass 6 Month Government Funding Bill

by Bonnie | | 0

Ten Democratic and Independent Senators joined with Republicans to pass a six month stopgap government funding bill just in time to avert government shutdown, infuriating the Democratic base.

The bill contains features that could wipe out the foundation for legal challenges that have until now almost all gone against Donald Trump’s rampant destruction of the government. All but one of the Democrats in the House (Jared Golden of Maine) stood firm against it, but as the minority party they could not block it there with only one Republican (Thomas Massie of Kentucky) defecting from the party line.

Senate Democrats could have blocked it because Republicans have a majority to pass bills, but not 60 votes to invoke cloture and bring the funding bill to the floor. House Democrats urged their Senate colleagues to hold fast against cloture and the bill.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asserted that government shutdown would have been worse than appeasing Trump. Much of the Democratic base vociferously disagrees.

Democrats in the Senate were damned no matter what they did. The choice ten of them made gives Trump and his largest campaign donor Elon Musk free rein to do nearly anything they want for six months. If Democrats had refused to pass the bill, Republicans could have used the resulting government shutdown to complete destruction of the federal government in one completely legal step by simply not doing anything to negotiate a compromise bill that would end the shutdown.

Democratic and Independent Senators who voted with Republicans to end cloture are:

Chuck Schumer (D-NY, Senate Minority Leader)
Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
John Fetterman (D-PA)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
Angus King (I-ME, caucuses with Democrats)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Brian Schatz (D-HI)

Of the Democrats and Independent who voted for cloture, only King and Shaheen voted for the bill itself. Among Republicans, only Rand Paul (R-KY) voted against the bill.

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