Murray warns of looming government shutdown after top Republican calls Trump budget move ‘clear violation of the law’

WASHINGTON – As Congress returned to the Capitol on Tuesday from its summer break with less than a month avert a government shutdown, the biggest impediment to funding the government may be lawmakers’ lack of confidence in each other – and in their own authority to direct federal spending.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a news conference on Wednesday that Congress must reach “a real bipartisan compromise” and pass a short-term spending bill by the end of September to keep the government funded while the panel works to finalize a full-year funding package.

“If House Republicans, however, go a different route and try and jam through a partisan CR without any input from Democratic members of Congress, and they suddenly find they don’t have the votes they need from our caucus to fund the government, well then, that is a Republican shutdown,” she said, using the acronym for a “continuing resolution” that would extend funding at current levels.

The U.S. Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to direct federal spending, but President Donald Trump has flouted that principle in the first seven months of his presidency, refusing to spend money on things he dislikes despite Congress having funded them through the yearly appropriations process, which requires bipartisan support.

On Aug. 29, the White House unilaterally canceled nearly $5 billion in funding Congress had previously approved, mostly for foreign aid. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the Appropriations Committee and Murray’s partner in shepherding the funding legislation through Congress each year, rebuked the move in a statement that same day.

“Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse,” Collins said. “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”

The White House’s gambit raises a question: Why would Democrats help pass a funding bill if the president can pick and choose only the parts of it that he likes? Republicans further undermined the appropriations process when Trump and adviser Elon Musk sank a bipartisan spending bill last December. GOP lawmakers then won a high-stakes game of chicken in March when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York chose to back their partisan spending plan rather than let the government shut down.

Murray, who publicly broke with Schumer over that last shutdown, said on Wednesday she won’t let her party get railroaded again. But GOP leaders in Congress have signaled they intend to craft a short-term spending bill without the Democrats, working closely with Trump administration officials like Russ Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

“There is no reason for Republicans to walk away from this table, not after the progress we have made this summer,” Murray said. “Republicans need to work with us to keep the government funded. They need to ignore Russ Vought, the guy who is tearing apart the federal budget, breaking the law and destroying things like cancer research for kids while Trump spends his time golfing.”

The Department of Health and Human Services in August moved to end funding for a pediatric brain tumor research consortium, the New York Times reported on Aug. 28. The Trump administration has cut billions in other medical research funding since the president took office in January.

So far, Congress has passed only three of the 12 separate appropriations bills that comprise the annual spending package, and both Murray and Collins have said they want to include those three bills in short-term spending legislation while their committee works to pass the nine that remain. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved eight of the dozen bills, but they must be approved by a 60-vote supermajority of the full Senate before going to the president’s desk to be signed into law, and both parties have given up on passing all 12 before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a first-term Republican from Spokane, said in a brief interview on Wednesday that he hopes there will be a regular appropriations process. He noted that Congress has often failed to pass a spending bill on time since the Congressional Budget Act established the current process in 1974, and he suggested that a two-year budget process may be more feasible.

“By definition, it does have to be a bipartisan process,” Baumgartner said. “And it seems like the Democrats have a lot of pressure from their base voters to fight back harder against the president, so I think that may limit some of the ability to have a bipartisan process.”

Asked if the Trump administration has undermined the credibility of that process, Baumgartner said he supports Article I of the Constitution.

“I think if Congress appropriates it, we control the purse strings. Our constitutional republic is set up by the Constitution, and it ought to be executed by the executive,” he said. “I hope there’s not a shutdown and we get a good bipartisan process through to keep the government running.”