Under growing pressure from their left flank, several Democratic centrists said Wednesday evening and Thursday that they would vote against the House GOP spending proposal, even though they had earlier warned that the failure to pass it could trigger a devastating government shutdown.
Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), two centrists up for re-election in 2026, announced they would vote to block the House bill, as did Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who as recently as Monday warned that blocking the bill and possibly triggering a shutdown would be a “huge risk.”
Ossoff, who is considered the most vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbent, announced late Thursday evening — after Schumer’s announcement — that he would oppose the House bill.
He said the bill “guts NIH research into diseases like Alzheimer’s and maternal mortality, funding for the prevention of violence against women, and Army Corps of Engineers construction of water infrastructure.”
Slotkin, who won election to the Senate last year in a state that Trump carried, also announced late Thursday evening that she would vote against the House bill.
“I will be voting no on the continuing resolution tomorrow. First, because this bill is bad for Michigan. It makes significant cuts to Michigan’s key infrastructure projects,” she said. “But on top of that, my Republican colleagues offered no assurances that the money wouldn’t be redirected at the whip of Elon Musk,” she said.
One Democratic senator familiar with the tense internal debate over strategy said the strong arguments of liberal senators and the growing pressure from the base had moved votes in the caucus.
“Some of them may be changing their viewpoint here,” the senator said of colleagues’ shifting stances on the House bill. “We’ve had that robust debate.”
[Bolding added]