Two members of the progressive ‘Squad’ insist Democrats should not bail out House Republicans to prevent a government shutdown without significant concessions.
In late 2024, Congress passed a stopgap spending bill called a continuing resolution to keep the government open until March 14, buying lawmakers time to finish writing the budget for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Now, some Democrats are hoping to use a looming government shutdown as leverage amid the Trump administration’s unilateral efforts to dismantle entire agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota both said that Republicans should figure out how to avoid a shutdown on their own.
“It is the Republican majority’s responsibility to gather the votes necessary for them to pass their agenda,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent.
Republicans only have a three-seat majority, and they’ll need votes from Democrats to keep the government funded.
In the last Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, regularly relied on Democrats to provide the votes necessary to avoid a government shutdown or a default on U.S. debt.
But Ocasio-Cortez said that Democrats should not roll over automatically.
“I think given the Republican majority’s attempts to completely gut the federal government, any concession necessary for the Democratic Party to assist them in passing a CR must be incredibly substantial,” she said.
Omar, another member of the progressive Squad that has sought to push the Democratic caucus in the House to the left, expressed similar sentiments.
“We should use all the leverage,” Omar told The Independent. “We need to make sure that he is not impounding funds that he continues to make sure, you know, congressional powers are protected.”
Omar is a member of the House Budget Committee and said that Democrats should block Republican attempts to slash the corporate tax rate. Even if Democrats somehow secure concessions from Republicans, they run the risk of the Trump administration simply ignoring the agreement and not spending the money.
“We don’t have an agreement that they will actually appropriate — they will utilize the money that we appropriate,” she said. “There’s no reason for us to help them out.”
Republicans are in the middle of debating how to pass filibuster-proof legislation that would extend the tax cuts that Trump signed in 2017, which expire at the end of the year.
But progressives in the House are not the only group of Democrats who say that they need to play hardball. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told The Independent that Democrats will try to negotiate.
“We’re waiting to do the work, they’ve got to sort themselves,” Schatz told The Independent.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a moderate freshman Democrat from Michigan, said Republicans need to sort their own problems.
“The Republicans are in the driver’s seat and the passenger seat and the best seat’s in the back,” she said.
