Fight over Trump's spending powers boosts shutdown odds

Congressional negotiators racing to avert a government shutdown next month appear to have hit a wall on the question of whether to limit President Trump’s powers to spend the money.

On one side of that divide are Democratic appropriators, who are already hammering the White House for refusing to back programs previously funded by Congress — a move they deem unconstitutional. They want explicit assurances that Trump will direct the new funding as Congress dictates going forward.

On the other side are Republican negotiators, who say the president has flexibility in deciding where to apportion federal funds. What would be unconstitutional, they argue, is if Congress steps in to limit that executive discretion.

The clash is just the latest front of the broader partisan brawl over the balance of powers in Washington and the scope of Trump’s authority to dictate public policy even when it conflicts with congressional intent.

The impasse has also raised the chances of a government shutdown, which would occur at midnight March 14 if Congress fails to reach a deal beforehand.

“We’re down to two options, a [stopgap] or a shutdown,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), one of 12 GOP spending cardinals in the lower chamber, told reporters on Thursday, adding lawmakers have “no time to negotiate” with just weeks on the calendar until the shutdown deadline.

There’s growing acknowledgement on both sides of the aisle that a stopgap of some kind will be necessary to keep the government from shutting down next month. Top Republicans are eyeing a full-year stopgap, known as a continuing resolution (CR), which would largely keep spending at current 2024 levels and deny both sides the chance to hash out new spending bills for fiscal 2025.

GOP leaders are blaming Democratic demands to rein in Trump for holding up funding talks.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters on Wednesday that there were “substantial differences” between both sides, although he and other top negotiators have said recently that they’re “close” or “virtually there” in top-line negotiations.

“Not so much on numbers, but over the presidential power issue with the Democrats,” Cole explained, while also telling reporters that Republicans are “not moving” on the matter.

At the same time, Democrats have waged an opposition campaign against the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been heavily influenced by billionaire Elon Musk, as it undertakes a sweeping operation to shrink and reshape the federal government.

They’re worried that the administration will simply ignore Congress’s spending designs — as Trump did in scrapping virtually the entirety of spending for the U.S. Agency for International Development — and want some guarantee that the money lands where lawmakers direct it to land.

“We’re just trying to sort out the way for us to get to — if I can just encapsulate this — to really follow the law of appropriations, to make sure that the money is going to where it's been intended to go,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Roughly 20,000 probationary federal employees have been axed as the Trump administration ramps up firings. That covers new hires and employees who were newly promoted.

Among the list of agencies where employees have been targeted are the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Interior and Education. Democrats have also sounded the alarm over reports the Social Security Administration is planning to layoff thousands of staff.

“We will continue to make clear that the law has to be followed — including as it relates to the funding of the Social Security Administration,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Thursday.

“Congress funded the Social Security Administration so that everyday Americans in their golden years can receive the Social Security benefits that they are owed.”

The recent moves have prompted fierce blowback from Democrats, as well as concerns from some Republicans. By contrast, many conservatives have cheered Trump’s orders, with some also ramping up calls on leadership to codify DOGE’s cuts in the funding legislation — a nonstarter with Democrats.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said earlier this month that Democrats would seek to include language in must-pass funding legislation to curb DOGE’s efforts, as the party has also faced pressure to counter Trump’s executive orders in the face of mass layoffs across federal agencies.

But as the shutdown deadline nears, there’s been chatter in the Capitol that Democrats may be willing to back down on those calls.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a spending cardinal, told reporters on Thursday that he heard Democrats might be willing “to negotiate, and that the issues regarding restrictions on presidential authority could be off the table.”

DeLauro, however, pushed back on that suggestion just moments later.

“We’re still talking about all of this, yes, and nobody's dropped anything,” she told reporters, adding: “We're waiting for a response. We did make an offer on Saturday. I'm waiting to hear back.”

Asked if Democrats were standing down on their push for assurances, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), Democrats’ top funding negotiator in the upper chamber, said lawmakers are “all working to try and get an agreement and move forward.”

“We are asking for our Republican colleagues to assure us, to give us the ability to note when we pass bills they are going to be followed by this White House,” she said, adding that there are “a lot of ways to do that, and we're looking at all of them.”

“The only person calling for a shutdown is Elon Musk. That would be very damaging to our country.”

But there are also concerns on the Democratic side about how far to push the effort to counter DOGE’s cuts in spending legislation.

Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees State Department funding, said Thursday that he is “not of the mind that putting in a law to require the enforcement of the original law does very much for us.”

“It'd be nice to enforce a law with another law, but we don't — that's not how this works, and other courts have so far been substantially on the side of the rule of law and the separation of power,” Schatz said.

“It may actually undermine our legal case, but more than that, if they're violating the first law, they're going to violate the second law.”

Rebecca Beitsch contributed.

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