U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
This report has been updated
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate deadlocked Friday over how to fund the government past a deadline at the end of September, escalating the odds of a shutdown and heightening tensions on Capitol Hill.
Democrats on a 44-48 vote blocked a seven-week stopgap spending bill that had passed the House just hours earlier, refusing to aid Republican leaders in getting the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation.
Republicans on a 47-45 vote also blocked a Democratic counter-proposal, a one-month stopgap bill that included several health care provisions.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters ahead of the votes that Democrats can either accept the GOP-drafted stopgap bill or shut the government down. President Donald Trump told Republicans they did not need to negotiate with Democrats on the legislation.
“The choice is pretty clear. It’s going to be funding the government through a clean, short-term continuing resolution or a government shutdown,” Thune said. “And that’s the choice the Democrats have. The House has acted. The president’s ready to sign the bill.”
Complicating matters is the congressional calendar, which has both chambers out next week for Rosh Hashanah. The Senate’s not scheduled to return until Sept. 29, with less than 48 hours to broker a deal and get it to Trump’s desk.
Thune said he’s not inclined to bring senators back early, despite the impasse.
“I’d say it’s unlikely we’ll be in next week but, obviously, you never completely shut the door,” Thune said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters following his chamber’s vote on the stopgap he hadn’t decided whether to reconvene the House earlier than planned.
“There’s a lot of discussion about it,” Johnson said. “The members have a lot of work to do in their districts as well, and so we try to balance those interests.”
House Republicans announced later in the day the chamber wouldn’t come back until Oct. 1, essentially jamming the Senate with the GOP bill.
Shutdown appearing more likely
Democratic leaders have vowed not to help Republicans get the votes needed on their current stopgap — a stark contrast from March, when Senate Democrats did just that, leading to significant frustration from their House colleagues.
The stalemate and congressional calendar have ratcheted up the odds of a protracted, deeply political government showdown that could last for weeks or even months.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said during floor debate the only path away from a shutdown runs through bipartisan negotiations.
“Why aren’t they willing to just meet and actually start charting a course on how we move forward? I think the main reason is Donald Trump,” Murray said. “He told Republicans, ‘Don’t even bother dealing with Democrats.’ It seems like Republican leaders are just afraid to cross the aisle and have a simple meeting, a mere conversation, if it risks losing Donald Trump.”
Murray said that approach to governing will have significant consequences for major legislation, which requires the support of at least some Democratic senators to advance in a Senate with 53 GOP members.
“So to get things done for our families back home, Republicans need to work with Democrats,” Murray said. “And if Republican leadership cannot find the courage to do that on what should be low-hanging fruit here, if they can’t sit down with our Democratic leadership to talk about a short-term CR, what does that mean for the work that we’ve been doing for our full-year spending bills? What does it mean for extending those health care tax credits? And what does it mean for any of the other challenging issues we would all like to work on together to address?”
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters it’s “malpractice” and “bananas” that GOP leaders don’t plan to shorten or cancel the break.
“What I’m hearing is that we’re not here next week. Like, are you kidding me?,” Murphy said. “You have all the evidence you need that Republicans want a shutdown — A, they refuse to negotiate and B, they’re sending us home for the week before the government shuts down. This seems like a planned shutdown as far as I can tell.
“There’s zero effort — zero — by Republicans to try to solve this.”
House passes bill
U.S. House Republicans passed the seven-week stopgap government funding bill earlier Friday.
The 217-212 vote represents the second time this year the House approved what’s called a continuing resolution on a predominantly party-line vote.
Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden was the only member of his party to support the bill. Kentucky Reps. Thomas Massie and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz were the only Republicans to vote no.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the stopgap spending bill is needed to give lawmakers more time to pass the dozen full-year government spending bills and called it the “responsible path.”
“We are certainly moving forward productively and a bipartisan, bicameral agreement is firmly within our grasp,” Cole said. “We just need more time to sustain negotiations and complete our work. That’s why we’re here today.”
Cole said that not approving a stopgap bill before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1 would lead to a shutdown and hinder those talks.
“Let me be very clear, a shutdown would do nothing to help our work on full-year bills or to support the American people,” Cole said. “So if you want stability for the American people, if you want time to negotiate in good faith and if you want regular order, you’ll support this CR. Any other vote would be reckless, not just for both parties but for the entire nation.”
A ‘broken political system’
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the committee, said Republicans’ decision to write the stopgap bill on their own signaled they weren’t actually interested in bipartisanship and that it “reflects a broken political system.”
“They would rather shut down the government than sit down and talk with Democrats about lowering costs for millions of Americans, preventing people from getting kicked off their health care and stopping President Trump and budget director Russ Vought from stealing from our communities and from our constituents,” DeLauro.
The Trump administration’s unilateral actions on spending, she said, are making work on government funding more complicated, since Democrats cannot trust the White House budget office to implement the laws as written.
“This administration continues to freeze, to terminate and cancel $410 billion in commitments to families, to farmers, to children, to small businesses and communities in every part of our country,” DeLauro said. “Billions of these commitments will soon be lost forever if Congress refuses to rein in this administration’s illegal actions.”
Republican and Democratic alternatives
Republicans’ 91-page stopgap spending bill would fund the government at current rates through Nov. 21, giving lawmakers more time to complete work on the full-year appropriations bills.
That bill, which was released Tuesday, includes $30 million to reimburse local police departments that provide security for lawmakers when they’re back in their home states, $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service for “Executive Branch protective services” and $28 million to bolster security for U.S. Supreme Court justices.
Democrats’ counter-proposal, released Wednesday, would fund the government through Oct. 31 and permanently extend the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.
The legislation would reverse many of the health care proposals Republicans included in their “big, beautiful” law, including substantial changes and funding cuts to Medicaid.
Democrats’ 68-page bill would bolster security funding considerably more than the GOP proposals. An additional $30 million would go toward mutual aid agreements with local and state police departments that provide security for members in their home states, $90 million would be provided for House security programs, and $66.5 million for the Senate Sergeant at Arms.
There would be an additional $140 million for the federal courts, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Marshals Service.
No negotiations
Stopgap spending bills have been a relatively routine and bipartisan part of funding the government for decades, until this year when Republican leaders drafted the legislation on their own.
Democrats have said consistently that if GOP leaders don’t work with them to draft a bipartisan stopgap, they cannot expect Democrats to vote for the final product.
The stalemate, which has to do with the process as well as significant policy differences, appears likely to lead to the first government shutdown since 2019.
A funding lapse this year, however, will impact much larger swaths of the federal government than that 35-day shutdown.
When that impasse began, Congress had passed five of the dozen full-year government funding bills, meaning that anyone working for Congress or in the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Veterans Affairs wasn’t impacted.
Lawmakers have yet to pass any of the appropriations bills for the upcoming fiscal year, meaning every department and agency that makes up the federal government will have to decide which employees work without pay and which are furloughed if a shutdown begins.
Those plans have been public in the past and appeared on the Office of Management and Budget’s website, but no guidance was posted as of Friday afternoon.
The White House budget office did not respond to a request from States Newsroom about whether it intends to post agency contingency plans.
