When a group of Senate Democrats helped pass a government funding bill in March, it caused a major fissure within the party, with the base itching to fight the Trump administration even if it came at the cost of a shutdown.
But just over a month later, President Donald Trump’s tariff policy has resulted in historic swings in the stock market and levels of economic uncertainty that are now landing squarely on his shoulders. And the Democrats who were criticized for keeping the government open are now feeling vindicated.
“I was right,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, told NBC News of his vote to keep the government open.
“I concluded, along with others, that a shutdown would actually further empower Trump and Musk to pursue what they’re doing,” King said. “We would have handed him a gift. Anything bad that happened to the economy would have been blamed on us.”
The 10 Senate Democrats who voted with Republicans to advance a six-month funding bill largely did so because of the uncertainty a government shutdown would bring, particularly in the face of the sweeping cuts being implemented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Many Democrats feared that those federal workers who were sidelined during the lapse in funding would be targeted for firings as soon as the government was reopened, or that the reopening would be done in a piecemeal fashion, creating a chaotic and painful fight in Congress over which programs needed to be reinstated and which could wait.
“We’d be deciding what we’re going to do with the shutdown or how we’re going to handle that,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told NBC News of what would have happened if they voted to block the funding bill.
“The main reason why I felt very strongly that we wouldn’t have a shutdown is that by having a shutdown you basically ceded power to the president,” he said.
Deep Democratic divisions
Many of the Democrats who voted to avert a shutdown faced an outspoken group of activists, voters and fellow lawmakers who saw the funding bill as one of their only points of leverage. While Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, funding legislation still requires 60 votes in the Senate, giving Democrats the ability to block bills in protest.
“I got my ass kicked in,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., told NBC News. “How would that look right now, if the government would be on fire and closed for a month because of what we would have done?”
“We would be owning that,” Fetterman said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., added, “I think the decision vindicated itself.”
“But I think it does point out one of the reasons that I explained to people who asked me about it was that if the economy went south, that the president would blame the Democrats, and that was not in anybody’s interest,” she said.
But Democrats who voted to block the funding bill say they still feel their strategy was the right one.
“I don’t think we should have supported that [continuing resolution], and I don’t think we should support a CR in the future unless it commits the administration to following the law,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told NBC News. “There’s no way I can vote to give them continued free rein to do that.”
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who voted against the funding bill, said he found the vote to be particularly vexing, telling NBC News: “That was one of those votes where I voted the way I thought was the right vote, but I couldn’t tell you with certainty that I was confident I was right.”
“I thought it was a very risky vote either way,” Welch said. “Our base, and rightly so, was demanding that we fight, and that was a moment where we had some leverage. On the other hand, the Schumer concern about what happened to the shutdown that Musk wanted was legitimate. There could have been an immense amount of additional damage.”
And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who was an outspoken advocate for blocking the GOP funding bill, expressed a desire to move on.
“This is not about the rearview mirror. Nobody wants to relitigate what happened. It’s about what we’re going to do going forward,” Warren told NBC News. “Donald Trump has proven himself to be an even bigger threat to the American economy and to the worldwide economy than anyone had predicted.”
The leader in the middle
No Democrat took more heat for voting to advance the GOP funding bill than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who faced calls to step down as the party’s leader in the chamber.
Voters at town halls across the country called for new leadership, and lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said “the American people are fed up with the old guard.” But Schumer remained defiant, arguing the vote was needed to keep the spotlight on Trump in the long term.
“I think I made the right decision,” Schumer told NBC News in an interview. “We’re all united in looking forward, because they have shown how incompetent they are in just about every issue.”
“The Republican Party is in shambles, it’s a mess. This last week has been terrible for them,” Schumer said, describing the effects Trump’s tariffs have had on the economy.
But public criticism of Schumer after the government funding vote did not come from fellow Senate Democrats, and murmurs of a need for change at the top appear to have subsided in recent weeks.
“I think he was correct in the decision that he made,” Shaheen said of Schumer’s support for advancing the bill.
Even Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Schumer’s support for the funding bill was “the noble thing,” noting that leadership on both sides of the aisle has to, at times, make difficult decisions.
“I think of how many times John Thune and John Barrasso and Mitch McConnell took the arrows for people who didn’t have the guts to do it, but who were happy to trash them on their Twitter feed and use it for fundraising,” Cramer told NBC News. “I always thought that was noble of those that he had the guts to do it, and tragic for those that would use them as a pin cushion, and I thought the same for Chuck and his team when they did it on their side, it was unfair.”
But while Cramer gave Schumer credit for voting to keep the government open, he also noted that political circumstances can quickly change.
“Does [Schumer] look smart today? Well yeah, but Donald Trump might look really smart tomorrow,” he said.
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