WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are taking a hatchet to federal agencies, using executive power to impose spending and job cuts that have sparked a polarizing debate in the nation’s capital and across the country.
The clash has stalled negotiations on Capitol Hill ahead of the March 14 deadline to avert a government shutdown, as Republicans who control the House and the Senate are making it clear they won’t accept constraints on Trump’s authority.
But Democrats have leverage even as the minority party. They are using it to demand guardrails in the bill to limit the executive branch’s discretion — and require the administration to carry out spending directed by Congress.
“If they want our votes, they need to work with us,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Tuesday. “We are close on top-line spending. We need to know Republicans are willing to work with us to protect Congress’ power of the purse — and I welcome any and all ideas they may have on how we can work together to do just that.
“That is the absolute bare minimum, and it is frankly not asking a whole lot. Republicans should not be so eager to let Elon Musk cut off cancer research or clean energy jobs in their districts. They should not follow Elon towards a shutdown,” she added.
Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., said limiting Trump’s spending discretion is a red line for his party.
“We’re close on the numbers. We’re pretty far apart still on trying to limit presidential powers,” he told reporters. “I don’t think you’re likely to see a Republican House and Republican Senate try to limit a Republican president.
“There’s not much middle ground there. You either have it or not,” Cole said. “The president has to sign it, so it can’t be something that he decides he doesn’t want to sign.”
Keeping the government funded requires the support of both parties, as it is subject the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, where Republicans control 53 seats. Any bill is likely to also require Democratic support in the House, where the GOP has a thin majority and scores of conservatives who routinely vote against government funding measures. The delays have caused negotiators to consider a stopgap funding bill at existing levels through the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30.
Numerous congressional Democrats and some legal scholars argue Trump’s attempts to unilaterally remake the federal government represent a constitutional crisis as Trump and Musk say it’s about rooting out waste. While Democrats insist they’re willing to compromise on funding, many of them see little value in signing off on a deal — a full appropriations deal or a stopgap bill — if Trump is empowered to ignore the parts he doesn’t like.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he's deferring on the talks to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democratic appropriator. She said her party has presented legislative options to Republicans to add in a government funding measure to ensure that the Trump administration will “follow the law.”
“We have made some suggestions, and they have them,” she said. “And we will just — we’re discussing them.”
“If you appropriate the money — you agree in the House, you agree in the Senate, the president signs the legislation — how can you then decide that that’s not what it’s going to be? Now there are some in the administration that would like to do that, and we just want to be sure that what we’re doing, make sure that the dollars ... are going for the purposes intended,” DeLauro told NBC News.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., an outspoken defender of Trump, said Republicans are open to negotiating funding levels but won’t compromise on his powers.
“They want to limit, tie the hands of the president on what he is able to do with the expenditures in the executive branch — that’s never been done before,” Johnson said Tuesday. “That’s a nonstarter for us, and the Democrats know that.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., was blunter in rejecting the idea: “I know they’re upset about that. But Chuck [Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader] needs to buy everybody over there an emotional support pony, because that’s not going to change. There’s no way that we’re going to agree to putting that kind of provision in there.
“And it creates a whole new host of separation of powers questions anyway that could make the whole thing unconstitutional,” he said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday she wants the top four appropriators to strike a funding deal and leave the presidential power question to top party leaders.
Asked whether she thinks it’s possible to strike a deal unless Democrats relent on their executive power demands, she told NBC News: “I do not. But my focus is on getting an agreement on the money, on the funding.”
Cole argued that Democrats are being unreasonable by withholding support for a deal because of disagreements with Trump’s use of executive powers. He said that then-President Joe Biden also “did a lot of things we didn’t like,” but that Republicans “didn’t try and limit presidential action here in appropriations” to protest it.
Asked whether Biden unilaterally withheld funds directed by Congress, as Trump is doing, Cole said: “I don’t know. I’d have to go back and check.”
