By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Friday was poised to pass a stopgap spending bill and avert a partial government shutdown, after Democrats backed down in a standoff driven by anger over President Donald Trump’s campaign to slash the federal workforce.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives earlier this week passed the measure, which largely leaves spending steady at about $6.75 trillion in the fiscal year that ends September 30.
Democrats expressed anger over the bill, which would cut spending by about $7 billion and they said does nothing to stop Trump’s campaign, spearheaded by Elon Musk, to halt congressionally mandated spending and slash tens of thousands of jobs.
Those moves are coming at the same time as Trump is locked in a trade war with some of the U.S.’s closest allies that has sparked a major sell-off in stocks and raised recession worries.
Top U.S. Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said he disliked the bill but said the consequences of a government shutdown would be a “far worse option.”
“A shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” Schumer said. “The Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel non-essential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.”
Blocking the bill would have required the support of at least 41 of Schumer’s Democrats, who have long opposed government shutdowns as causing needless chaos to American families.
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and a 218-213 edge in the House.
The partisan bill would reduce spending by about $7 billion from last year’s levels. The U.S. military would get about $6 billion more, while non-defense programs would see a $13 billion reduction.
DEMOCRATS’ DILEMMA
Democratic senators over the past few days struggled over whether to block the bill in protest of its spending priorities or plunge government agencies into shutdown mode.
“This president has put us in a position where in either direction lots of people’s constituents are going to get hurt and hurt badly,” Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico told reporters on Thursday.
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was not feeling tortured by indecision.
“Never, never, never, never shut the government down,” he said, adding, “it’s an easy rule.” He did, however, express concerns with the contents of the Republican bill.
Republican lawmakers said they had not seen Democrats’ threats to vote against the measure as a serious threat.
“It’s hard for me to see a world where Democrats would literally be the ones to prevent the funding of the government, when it comes so much more naturally to them than it does to us,” Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters.
UP NEXT: DEBT AND TAXES
Once they clear the shutdown fight, congressional Republicans will turn their attention to a plan to extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — his major first-term legislative achievement — boost funding for border security and cut spending in other areas, which Democrats warn could imperil the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income Americans.
They also need to act by sometime this spring or summer to raise their self-imposed debt ceiling or risk triggering a catastrophic default on the federal government’s nearly $36.6 trillion in debt.
That measure, which Republicans plan to pass using a maneuver to bypass Democratic opposition, could add $5 trillion to $11 trillion to the debt, according to nonpartisan budget analysts.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)
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