Democrats want a government funding fight. But they haven't decided on a plan.

WASHINGTON — When House Democrats gathered behind closed doors Tuesday to discuss strategy to avert a government shutdown, they agreed on one thing: They must use the leverage of the Sept. 30 deadline to advance their priorities.

But the party has yet to agree on what those priorities should be.

In the House meeting, lawmakers voiced anxieties about the nearing deadline, proposing a wide variety of ideas, multiple sources with knowledge of the discussion said. And they questioned whether their Senate counterparts would have the stomach for a fight after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other key Democratic senators supported a Republican-only spending bill during the last shutdown deadline in March.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., encouraged lawmakers to focus on a viable endgame.

“If we’re going to lean into the fight, we need to win the fight,” he told the Democrats, according to a person in the room.

The source, who discussed the private meeting on condition of anonymity, added that there was overwhelming agreement among House Democrats that they should pick the fight — and that they would need their Senate colleagues on board.

The meeting ended without clarity about the path forward.

With three weeks left before the deadline, Republicans will again need Democratic votes to avoid a shutdown, at least in the Senate, where the GOP controls 53 seats and requires 60 votes to pass a funding bill.

Democratic leaders in both chambers are determined to avoid a repeat of March, when Schumer and nine other Democratic senators voted to advance a six-month funding bill they had no input in crafting. But apart from demanding a “bipartisan” approach, leadership hasn’t fleshed out what it wants.

The party is divided over what demands it should make. Some want to pursue a traditional path, passing some easily agreed-upon funding bills in a bipartisan manner, along with a short-term bill to buy time for the others. Others want to make an aggressive set of policy demands. Yet others say there can be no deal as long as President Donald Trump unilaterally withholds money directed by Congress.

Some Democrats are leery of drawing red lines in a standoff, according to two people familiar with the dynamics. They worry that if the GOP rejects their demands, it could lead to a damaging government shutdown that might backfire on them politically. Instead, they prefer to start negotiating privately with Republicans and get a sense of what's achievable.

Democratic leaders haven’t made an offer to the GOP privately, according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. Democrats say they’ve repeatedly asked for meetings to begin discussions, only to be stonewalled by Republican leaders for weeks.

Jeffries and Schumer plan to meet Wednesday with key members of their own leadership teams and top appropriators, who are responsible for crafting spending bills, to hash out the strategy, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The leaders will have a lot to discuss — with high stakes. Top Democrats have discussed demanding an extension of expiring Obamacare funds, the three sources said. One said they're also considering proposing guardrails on Trump's use of rescissions — the presidential power to unilaterally undo congressionally approved spending, which is being challenged in the courts — among a host of other possibilities.

Publicly, some Democrats want to go bolder by demanding to repeal parts of Trump's sweeping new law, most notably cuts to Medicaid.

“If they want Democratic votes, I think we need to have a high price. And so that price could be saving the ACA — I think that’s certainly a noble, worthwhile endeavor,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said after the meeting, referring to the Affordable Care Act. “There could be a lot of other things, too. Restoration of some of these Medicaid cuts. We’ve got some of these cuts to SNAP and food assistance that are kicking in in January. We have a responsibility, I think, to really set a high price so that we can protect people.”

There is also disagreement among Democrats about whether to even pursue a deal unless Trump backs off his legally dubious use of rescissions or “pocket rescissions.”

“This budget potentially won’t be worth the paper it’s written on, because the president isn’t implementing the law, in violation of the Constitution — and in a variety of ways continues to act brazenly lawlessly,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Appropriations Committee, told NBC News, adding that any deal should also extend Obamacare funding “to make sure that our health care system doesn’t fall apart during this fiscal year.”

Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., has also called for a more aggressive posture, outlining a list of policy proposals, including repeal of Trump’s tax cuts for higher earners and his Medicaid cuts.

“Conventional wisdom is to settle for a BS funding deal that ‘minimizes damage.’ Newsflash: Trump doesn’t honor deals & he’s already screwing the American people,” Ryan wrote on X. “You don’t cower in front of a bully. You punch them right in the mouth & expose them for the fraud they are.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, is calling on Republicans to break with the White House and take a traditional path.

Murray said that she spoke Monday to the other top appropriators in both parties and that their preference is to pass three out of 12 appropriations bills that fund the government in full, in addition to a short-term bill for the rest of federal spending to provide more time to negotiate.

“But we know this means very little unless [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson and Leader Thune agree with their approach,” Murray said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a senior appropriator and lead author of a bill to permanently extend the Obamacare subsidies, declined to say whether Democrats should make that a demand in a government funding bill.

“We need to see how this plays out. I think it’s very important for us to get that done, because so many people are going to be affected, and they’re going to lose their health insurance,” she said. “There are only so many bills that are moving in Congress.”

Pressed about whether Democrats should insist on including the health care money in a government funding bill, Shaheen replied: “I think there are a lot of options, and hopefully this will continue to be on the table.”

The White House isn't reciprocating Democratic leaders’ desire for bipartisanship. Trump budget director Russell Vought has rejected calls for the parties to work together to fund the government, instead arguing that the process is broken and that it should be “less bipartisan” so the GOP can advance its goals.

The White House has ignored criticism of those remarks from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Appropriations Committee chair, who is up for re-election next year.

Thune, meanwhile, indicated some openness Tuesday to pursuing the three appropriations bills, along with a stopgap bill for a couple of months to keep the rest of the government open.

“What that date is — we hear November from the House. The White House seems to be trending in that direction,” Thune said. “But we’re going to need a continuing resolution.”

Schumer spoke in broad terms Tuesday after a caucus meeting when he was asked what Democrats want specifically to support a short-term bill. But he pointed to health care.

“It’s got to be bipartisan. And second, we have focused for the last month and a half on how there’s lots of bad things in what the Trump administration has done. But our focus is on health care, and they’ve done so much damage to the health care system,” Schumer said. “We want to see the damage that they’ve done to the health care system undone.”