Congressional Democrats, including Connecticut lawmakers directly involved in the appropriations process, are assessing the best way to influence government funding legislation with a quickly approaching deadline.
During the last government funding fight in March, enough Democrats ultimately backed a GOP spending bill that didn’t include their input, a move that kept the government open and averted a shutdown but riled up a base that wanted the party to put up a fight amid the cancellation of federal funding.
At the time, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who had voted against the GOP spending measure, called on his party to “change our tactics.” But six months later, the Connecticut senator insisted Democrats will employ a different strategy over government funding.
“Ultimately what happened in the spring was … a handful of [Senate] Democrats voted for a bill that was written totally and completely by Republicans,” Murphy said in an interview. “That’s not going to happen this fall. Democrats in the Senate aren’t going to vote for a bill that isn’t negotiated between Republicans and Democrats.”
But the bigger question confronting Democrats is how exactly they go about exerting the rare leverage they have in a Congress completely controlled by Republicans — and what they’d be willing to accept in a spending deal to keep operations going.
With the looming threat of a shutdown, lawmakers are facing a deadline of Sept. 30. And Connecticut’s appropriators — both Murphy and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, are playing active roles in the debate over funding for fiscal year 2026. Both are pushing for bipartisan negotiations but underscored that a lack of Democratic priorities and the continuation of the Trump administration withholding funds are nonstarters.
Congress is eyeing a short-term deal that will buy them more time to negotiate a full-year spending package. That stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, keeps government agencies running at current levels for a specific amount of time.
Government funding fights have become increasingly thorny issues for Congress. But this latest cycle is further complicated by outside demands from the White House and an ongoing push to withhold funds already approved by Congress.
Republicans advanced an initial rescissions package this summer that cut billions of dollars in public broadcasting funds and foreign assistance. Now, the Trump administration is seeking to take back an additional $5 billion through a process called “pocket rescissions” that would circumvent Congress. A federal judge recently ruled that such a move is illegal.
White House budget director Russ Vought has indicated he wants to keep Democrats out of the appropriations process and have it be “less bipartisan.” But realistically, any funding legislation needs support from Democrats in order to pass. Republicans only need a simple majority in the House, but in the Senate, they need votes from at least seven Democratic senators to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance a bill.
Some Democratic appropriators like Murphy are wondering whether they can “trust” any funding agreements negotiated with the majority party because the administration could once again decide to circumvent Congress and its power of the purse.
“This president has either canceled or refused to spend over $400 billion, and that decision is both illegal and deeply harmful to our economy,” Murphy said. “We really risk writing a budget that’s not worth the paper it’s written on if the president decides he’s going to spend the money that he wants to spend and not spend the money in blue states or that are aligned with priorities that aren’t his.”
DeLauro, along with her fellow top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, released an updated tracker detailing how much the Trump administration has withheld in federal funding. The number has fluctuated as some funds have been released, but the most recent estimate is around $410 billion, including cuts in health, education and environmental grants.
How CT’s appropriators are navigating spending talks
While some White House officials are looking at more of a party-line strategy, appropriators are taking a more bipartisan approach.
DeLauro plays an even larger role as the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. She’s been part of the committee for years, served as chairwoman when Democrats were in the majority in 2021 and has been the ranking member since Republicans took back the House.
She noted that the House and Senate have been on two different tracks and have spending bills with different topline numbers — the House is working with GOP-led legislation, while the Senate is pursuing bipartisan negotiations.
“We’ve made some progress here. I’ll continue to negotiate, but I will not support an agreement that doesn’t include Democratic priorities and doesn’t stop the stealing of funds through whatever procedural efforts the White House and [the Office of Management and Budget] wants,” DeLauro said in an interview.
“There’ll be tough negotiations, but I’ve been there before, and we ought to be able to come to a conclusion,” she added.
She indicated Thursday that talks between the Four Corners — the top Republicans and Democrats on the two appropriations committees — were heading in the right direction. DeLauro said they are “in sync” with a continuing resolution that would keep things for about a month or a little longer. Though that puts them at odds with the request from the White House for a months-long stopgap that runs through Jan. 31.
DeLauro was named to the conference committee that will include members from both parties as well as both chambers to negotiate and reconcile differences on three funding bills: Agriculture and Rural Development, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Legislative Branch. The plan would be to pass full-year funding for those three along with a stopgap bill to temporarily fund the rest of the government.
Meanwhile, Murphy is still working on a bipartisan bill as the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. But he said Wednesday that they have yet to reach a compromise. His subcommittee pushed back the markup of the DHS bill that was scheduled for earlier this week.
Murphy attributed the holdup to the way the Department of Homeland Security is repurposing funding approved by Congress to go toward stricter immigration enforcement and Trump’s deportation and detention agenda. But he still hopes they can compromise.
What Democrats hope to get
Lawmakers have a few more weeks to sort out the details, but so far, Democrats are playing hardball, raising the prospects of a shutdown. But it’s also not immediately clear what their final conditions will be to win their support.
“The Republicans have to come to meet with us in a true bipartisan negotiation to satisfy the American people’s needs on health care, or they won’t get our votes, plain and simple,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a press conference this week. Schumer took a lot of flak in March for helping to get the GOP spending bill across the finish line. At the time, he argued a partial shutdown would have been a worse option than voting with Republicans.
Health care has emerged as one of their main priorities in a spending agreement. And more Democrats appear to be rallying around an Affordable Care Act subsidy, known as the enhanced premium tax credit, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
If Congress doesn’t extend it in some capacity, insurance premiums are expected to increase, and the loss of financial help could lead to some Americans losing coverage altogether. Connecticut residents who get insurance through the state health care exchange could pay an average of $1,700 more a year.
“Our entire health care system will be undermined by the failure to renew these premium tax credits,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said during a press conference at the state Capitol on Friday. “Health insurance and these premium tax credits are absolutely essential to lowering the cost of health care.”
Blumenthal has co-sponsored federal legislation that would make the enhanced premium tax credits permanent.
Nationally, if the subsidies sunset at the end of the year, the Congressional Budget Office projected that more than 4 million people would lose health care over the next decade, citing the increases in out-of-pocket costs because of more costly premiums.
Amid the changes in the federal health policy landscape and the expiring tax credits, the Connecticut Insurance Department this week approved double-digit rate increases for state-regulated health plans in 2026.
Murphy said he’d like to see an agreement that goes beyond extending those subsidies and seeks to roll back some of the cuts to Medicaid that’ll be implemented in the coming years through President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”
“I see a health care disaster coming for Connecticut and the rest of the country later this year, and this budget has to abate that disaster,” Murphy said. “I’m not going to vote for a budget that isn’t real, and unless we put some provisions in this bill that make it harder for Trump to undermine the rule or law and ignore the spending in the bill, I don’t see how I can vote for it.”
Between some health care protections and commitments that the White House won’t redirect or cancel congressionally approved funds, Murphy thinks his vote is easy to get. “That’s a pretty minimalist set of demands, if you ask me.”
But those demands may not be met.
While the ACA subsidy extensions seemed to be on the table, Republican leadership recently indicated that it wouldn’t be a part of negotiations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he wants a “clean” bill.
But Democrats haven’t been the only ones pushing for the renewal of those subsidies, especially with the political reality that many Americans would lose coverage or face higher premiums at the start of the midterm election year in 2026. Some Republicans have also been supportive of extending the tax credits, and a group in the House recently backed legislation before spending talks ramped up.
Without getting into the specifics of what could be at the negotiating table, DeLauro said health care will be a “broad” piece of what Democrats are seeking. And both Murphy and DeLauro would like to see commitments that Trump won’t interfere with the new rounds of federal funding they are trying to pass.
“There’ll be a broad discussion about health care. Health care is a cost of living issue. I’m not specifying this one or that one,” DeLauro said. “We need a broad conversation about what should be included and that’s what the Democratic leadership is going to be doing.”
New strategy?
Democrats have been saying for months they want to fight harder — something that their supporters have been clamoring for since their defeat in the November elections.
Frustration surfaced among Democrats in the House and Senate over their funding strategy months ago.
Both Murphy and Blumenthal voted with many of their Senate colleagues against the funding bill. Nearly every House Democrat, including every member of Connecticut’s delegation, also voted against the bill in the spring.
Plus, the risk of a shutdown looms large amid negotiations and the uncertainty of finding consensus. And Democrats and Republicans are already giving a preview of the inevitable blame game that would play out if funding lapses after Sept. 30.
Republicans say the ball is in Democrats’ court to accept a deal to keep things open. Democrats, meanwhile, argue the GOP controls Congress and the White House and it’s on them to find consensus.
“The ultimate question of whether there’s going to be a government shutdown at the end of the month is going to be up to congressional Democrats, and that’s just the way it is,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
There hasn’t been a government shutdown since the first Trump administration. It was a partial shutdown that started late December 2018 and lasted about a month into January 2019.
If there’s another one during Trump’s second term, Republicans would pay the price, Democrats say.
“I think we can come to a reasonable compromise here,” Murphy said, “And if the government shuts down, everybody in this country knows who runs the House, who runs the Senate and who runs the White House.”
CT Mirror reporter Katy Golvala contributed to this story.
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
