What's in the GOP’s Funding Plan to Avoid a Government Shutdown?

The Senate is set to vote today on a House GOP stopgap bill to fund the government until September.

Given the GOP’s 53-seat Senate majority and already one pledged no vote from the caucus, at least eight Democrats will have to come out in support of the bill for it to pass. Lawmakers have until midnight tonight to agree on a funding measure or risk another potential government shutdown.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who as recently as Wednesday urged Republicans to join the Democratic measure, changed his tune on the legislation, stunning many of his colleagues.

“I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open, and not shut it down,” he said on the Senate floor.

Taking the lead of their counterparts in the House, many Democrats in the upper chamber are refusing to vote for the stopgap bill. Instead, they are pushing for a vote on an amendment that could call for a shorter-term funding bill that would last through April.

While the largest fight facing the chambers is the funding bill, they’re also grappling with the budget process on a separate track. Both chambers have passed frameworks, and Republicans in the House and Senate are working together to merge them. The finished product, which has to be adopted by both chambers, seeks to enact larger parts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda. While that blueprint is proceeding parallel to the spending bill, some of the disputes involved have bled over to harden divisions between the parties as they attempt to pass the stopgap bill.

Here’s what’s in the stopgap bill.

Defense and Immigration Enforcement Spending Up, IRS, NIH Spending Down

The bill will keep funding the government at the current levels set last year by former President Joe Biden until September, which is a major concession for House Republicans. It will also notably bypass the yearly appropriations process in which Congress directs how to allocate the funds, allowing the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency wide leeway in deciding how money is spent.

House Republicans plan to cut $13 billion in discretionary spending on areas other than defense and increase defense spending by $6 billion. An additional $6 billion for veterans’ health care is included.

Disaster relief for California was not included, and several programs – including international peacekeeping and National Institutes of Health research – will be hit. Add-ons include a $20 billion cut to IRS enforcement and an increase for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation operation.

Most importantly, though, the cuts in spending do not touch key programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, which notably drew the ire of Republican voters when cuts to Medicaid were included in the budget blueprint.

Proposed cuts to DOGE were also left out, with Johnson saying they can be addressed in next year’s spending talks.

Budget Will Likely Upend the Local Budget in Washington, D.C.

The bill will also affect Washington, D.C., the local budget of which is overseen by Congress.

The spending bill would effectively undo the District’s 2025 budget, doling out an estimated $1 billion in cuts and forcing it to go back to its 2024 budget until Oct. 1. Such a move would likely affect everything from law enforcement to schools.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration warned over the weekend that the proposed budget could result in layoffs and furloughs for teachers and other front-line workers as an estimated 16% of the remaining budget would need to be trimmed to comply.

The stopgap bill would cut funding mid-way through the fiscal year, when the District is already spending at its ostensibly congressionally approved fiscal 2025 levels, a memo from her office on Saturday said.

“This means a nearly $945 million cut for the District, impacting teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement,” it added.

Senate Faces an Impossible Choice: Vote “Yes” or Shut Down the Government

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota offered harsh words for Democrats Tuesday, saying they will bear full responsibility for a shut down if they block the House-passed bill.

“Without action from Congress, the government will run out of funding come Friday,” he said, adding that a shutdown would be “entirely of the Democrats’ making.”

But as the week progressed, the number of lawmakers willing to vote for a shutdown increased, as did those pushing for an amendment vote on the shorter-term bill.

Thune threw a bone to Democrats on Thursday, saying he was open to allowing a vote on an amendment in exchange for support on the bill. Democrats have been wanting to vote on their own measure for a 30-day funding extension to buy time for a bipartisan spending agreement.

If Democrats do vote on the amendment, the stopgap bill would still pass but it would allow them to go on record as having opposed it in a meaningful way. Republicans took a similar approach in 2021 when working with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

Trump's First 100 Days

Updated on March 14, 2025: This article has been updated to reflect more recent information.