Jonathan D. Salant file photo
DeLauro (center) in her Capitol office in February, flanked by fellow Appropriations Committee Democrats Mike Quigley of Illinois, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Lois Frankel of Florida and Ed Case of Hawaii.
WASHINGTON —- A day after the U.S. House voted along party lines to keep the federal government open past Friday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro continued to work the phones Wednesday in a final effort to block the funding bill.
The calls went to Democratic senators, and DeLauro, D‑New Haven, said she was doing her best to prevent them from supporting the GOP measure. “I’m telling them they should vote no,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D‑Conn., already said he would oppose the measure.
The fight is over funding the government when the current temporary spending bill expires at the end of the week. Congress needs to act by then.
House Republicans already did, passing what is known as a continuing resolution. DeLauro said their bill would give President Donald Trump greater authority to ignore Congress and decide on his own how to spend money allocated by the House and Senate.
“You transfer the power of the purse, which constitutionally belongs in the Congress, to the executive, which is what they want,” she said. The GOP bill would allow Trump to “really accelerate the stealing of the funds that have been appropriated and intended for American families and American businesses.”
Republicans who backed the stopgap bill, meanwhile, have framed it as a vote of support for President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to continue making broad cuts to the federal government.
DeLauro and other Democrats already have challenged Trump’s refusal to spend the money Congress has appropriated on what lawmakers want, and she has supported legal challenges to those actions by outside groups.
Democrats have held town halls, released videos and appeared on new media outlets to talk about the impact of Trump’s spending cuts.
“The more people know about this, the more people will be angry,” DeLauro said.
Members of both parties, including DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, had been negotiating a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30. Such legislation could make it harder for Trump to ignore Congress’s wishes on spending, DeLauro said.
She said they were close to a deal, but Republicans walked away and passed their own legislation with their own priorities, rather than compromise. “They do want it their way or not at all,” DeLauro said.
But that may not work in the Senate, where Republicans need the support of at least seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold in that chamber.
“Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input — any input — from congressional Democrats,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑N.Y. “Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate.”
Meanwhile, both sides are rushing to blame the other if a shutdown does occur.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R‑La., who had to rely on Democratic votes in the past to keep the government open over GOP objections when the Democrats occupied the White House, now complained that the Democrats “changed their tune when President Trump returned to office.”
But DeLauro said Republicans would be the ones who would be held responsible for a government shutdown.
“If they walk away from the negotiating table,” she said, “they bear the brunt of the shutdown.”