The odds of a government shutdown are rising after Democratic leaders on Tuesday swiftly rejected a 91-page stopgap funding proposal unveiled by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and fellow House Republicans because it was put together with little Democratic input and doesn’t extend generous health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Democrats voted more than a dozen times to extend federal funding with short-term “clean” continuing resolutions when former President Biden was president and they controlled the Senate, but now they’re drawing a hard line on what ordinarily would be a noncontroversial funding proposal.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Tuesday said the political dynamics in Washington today are very different from March, when he and nine other Senate Democrats voted for a partisan House-passed funding bill despite strong misgivings.

The New York Democrat said he had to swallow a bad Republican bill because he feared a shutdown would “give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country.”

On Tuesday, he said Democrats now would have the upper hand over President Trump if federal funding lapses, forcing departments and agencies to close.

“It’s much different now,” Schumer said. “The Republicans are in a much weaker position now than they were then.”

He argued the Medicaid spending cuts and other elements of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act are “highly unpopular.”

He said Democrats are more unified than they were earlier this year.

And he declared Trump’s “unlawful” attempts to freeze federal grants and claw back previously appropriated funding through a pocket rescission need a forceful response.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) acknowledged Tuesday that the possibility of a government shutdown appears to be growing.

“I’m sure you’re all asking the question, are we or are we not going to have a Schumer shutdown? It sounds like from what he is indicating, that very may well happen,” Thune told reporters after the weekly Republican policy lunch.

He said Republican leaders will stick to their plan of passing a seven-week clean stopgap funding measure through the House and then hope there might be enough Democrats to vote for it on the Senate floor.

“We’re going to give them every opportunity to vote for a clean CR, something that in the past Senator Schumer and the Democrats have said they support,” he said.

The House bill would fund the government through Nov. 21 and would provide $58 billion to increase security for executive branch officials and the Supreme Court in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

It would also provide $30 million to improve security for members of Congress back in their home states and districts.

Rank-and-file senators now say they think a government shutdown is more likely to happen than not.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said if he was forced to bet, he’d “say that it’s a better than 50-50 chance we have a shutdown.”

Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said Tuesday they need to take a stand against the House bill because Republican leaders have refused to meet with them to craft the measure.

“By refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country straight toward a shutdown,” they said in a joint statement released immediately after House Republicans posted the continuing resolution.

Schumer accused Speaker Johnson of politicizing the process by “refusing our multiple requests to sit down and talk and doing his own CR without a single conversation with Democrats.”

He and Jeffries accused Republican leaders of taking their marching orders from President Trump, who said in a recent “Fox & Friends” interview that Republicans shouldn’t “bother dealing” with Democrats as they advance legislation to fund the government past Sept. 30.

Schumer and Jeffries are also hitting Republicans for not including language in the funding bill to extend enhanced health care premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act or to restore Medicaid funding cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“They’ve decimated health care for the American people, and the American people are telling senators and congressmen across the country, ‘We want that changed and want that now,’” Schumer said. “We’ve always had bipartisan negotiations on this. Johnson put his bill in, no Democratic input. That is why the Republicans are heading … for a shutdown.”

Senate Democrats at a lunch meeting Tuesday discussed putting together their own short-term government funding bill that would include language to stave off rising health care costs and to restrict Trump’s ability to use pocket rescissions to sidestep Congress’s spending authority.

That bill, however, would have little chance of getting enough Republican votes to pass. Any funding stopgap needs 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster.

Thune on Tuesday said Republicans are willing to “address” the expiration of enhanced health insurance premium subsidies, but he said there’s not enough time to resolve the issue before government funding expires on Sept. 30.

“I think the ACA subsidies will be an issue that will be addressed, but I think right now we’ve got to keep the government open so we can do appropriations bills and work on that, with that solution,” he told reporters.

“I don’t think it’s going to be close to ready to go by the shutdown of the government, which would happen September 30,” he said of a bipartisan deal to extend the subsidies.

Thune says he’s confident a shutdown won’t play to the Democrats’ advantage, even though he acknowledged Democrats think they have a stronger hand than they did in March.

He expressed hope that at least eight Democrats would cross the aisle to vote with Republicans to keep the government open. At least one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), has already said he won’t vote to shutter federal departments and agencies.

Fetterman said Monday he supports an extension of the health care subsidies but argued that should be a “stand-alone thing.”

“Don’t keep our government operation as a hostage,” he said. “I refuse to weaponize shutting down our government. My colleagues might disagree.”

And one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), an outspoken fiscal conservative, said he will vote against the stopgap because it doesn’t do enough to cut spending.