Senators will vote Friday on competing plans to temporarily fund the government past the end of the month as a partisan standoff ratchets up the chances for a shutdown.
Senate leaders finalized the plan, first reported by POLITICO, for side-by-side votes on Republican and Democratic stopgaps after Republicans huddled behind closed doors for a second time Thursday to talk about the path forward ahead of the Sept. 30 midnight deadline.
It was a shift from just hours earlier when Majority Leader John Thune indicated that there wasn’t “much sentiment” inside the GOP for giving Democrats a vote on their alternative funding proposal.
But Democrats played procedural hardball over the Senate’s ability to leave town for a scheduled one-week break, forcing the concession. Both votes are set to be held at a 60-vote threshold, meaning both will almost certainly fail.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer first floated the idea of voting together on the competing funding measures earlier Thursday morning. He touted the plan after it was finalized Thursday evening, saying that the outcome of the votes “will tell all.”
“Tomorrow Republicans can choose: Either listen to Donald Trump and shut the government down or break this logjam by supporting our bill and keeping the government open,” he said from the Senate floor.
But the gambit appears poised to push Congress down to the wire, with senators largely unclear on what off-ramps are available to avoid a funding lapse. Thune said he did not speak to Schumer as part of the negotiations to lock in the two-bill plan.
Thune said that it’s “unlikely” the Senate will come back into town next week, meaning the next vote on the GOP’s stopgap bill would come on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29 — less than 48 hours before a potential shutdown.
