Bracing for a Shutdown Fight, Democrats Warn Their Votes Are Not a Given

One month out from a deadline to avert a government shutdown, Republicans in Congress are struggling to find the votes to extend federal funding, and Democrats are issuing a stark warning: Don’t look at us this time.

After two years of coming to the rescue to keep the government running when Republicans could not get their own members to support stopgap spending bills needed to do so, many Democrats say they cannot in good conscience play that role again. President Trump’s drive to dismantle and defund programs Congress has authorized — coupled with his billionaire ally Elon Musk’s work through the Department of Government Efficiency to purge the federal bureaucracy — have soured their appetite for compromise.

“If Elon Musk and DOGE has found all of this fraud, and waste, and abuse — hundreds of billions of dollars, as they claim — well, then, we can’t fund the government by C.R. anymore,” Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, said in a floor speech this week, referring to continuing resolutions, the stopgap spending bills Congress normally passes to avoid government shutdowns.

Hard-line Republicans typically oppose such measures because they continue funding at the same levels rather than imposing cuts, and Mr. Moskowitz was borrowing their logic.

“The C.R. would re-fund all of that waste, fraud and abuse that DOGE has found,” Mr. Moskowitz added. “Which means the only way to fund the government is to fund it by individual spending bills.”

It was a devil’s advocate monologue aimed not only at explaining why Democrats should refuse to support a single measure that is needed to avert a government shutdown after March 14, but also tagging any Republican who does so as a hypocrite. And it reflected the divisions playing out among Democrats in Congress about how to position themselves in a looming spending fight that Republicans need their help to resolve.