ALSO SEE: Senate Pushes Closer to Shutdown After Democrats Spurn Funding Bill

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said his party would block a Republican spending bill to avert a government shutdown on Saturday and urged the GOP to accept a Democratic plan to provide funding through April 11 instead.

House Republicans passed legislation on Tuesday to finance the government through Sept. 30, daring moderate Democrats in the Senate to block the measure over objections it fails to constrain Musk.

House Republicans left Washington for a two-week break after the vote, which drew the support of only one Democrat. Senate Republicans have said there is no viable alternative to the House-passed bill.

Moderate Senate Democrats have been coy about how they would vote. Tensions over the impending shutdown appeared to boil over at a party lunch on Wednesday, with shouting heard in the hallway outside.

At least one Senate Democrat said he will not back a strategy that risks a lapse in government funding.

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a state Trump has now won twice, announced he would never vote to shut down the government, declaring in social media post that to do so would “punish millions or risk a recession.”

Democrats historically have been much more reluctant than Republicans to make threats to shut down the government, in part because the party ideologically places a high value on government services and benefits to the public.

Yet some of them fear that failing to draw a line now would set a precedent for a larger battle in the fall when Republicans plan to enact Musk’s cuts into law for fiscal 2026.

Democrats did spur a short funding lapse in 2018 during the first Trump administration as part of an effort to protect immigrants brought to the US illegally as children. But that shutdown only lasted a few days before Democrats backed down and agreed to a deal reopening the government.

Still, several moderates said after the Wednesday Senate Democratic lunch that they want a short-term alternative in order to work out a bipartisan long-term bill.

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said that Democrats want a vote on an amendment that would change the stopgap funding to a short-term measure, in exchange for ending their filibuster of the House bill. If that amendment fails, then the Senate could vote on the House bill ahead of the deadline.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat who just announced that she will not seek reelection in 2026, said she believes some Senate Republicans are not happy with the House bill and could go along with the short-term measure.

Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who said she “hates” the House bill, nonetheless told reporters she doesn’t see how a short-term bill could pass Congress.