Congress is barreling towards another government shutdown deadline — and with Democratic votes necessary to move any spending bill over the finish line, Nevada’s congressional delegation appears wary of embracing a GOP spending plan.

Government funding runs out at midnight on March 14. If no spending bill passes by then, the federal government will shut down — meaning in Nevada, active duty service members, air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees are expected to work without pay, services will be shut down at federal lands including Lake Mead National Recreation Area and Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and regional Veterans Affairs offices will close.

Members of the Nevada delegation — including Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and the state’s five Democrats — have historically been opposed to shutting down the government. All six members have supported spending patches — passed on a bipartisan basis — five times in the last session of Congress, when the House of Representatives regularly took the funding deadline down to the wire.

In most of those instances, Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) — a stopgap bill that keeps government funding at its prior level. Right now, federal agencies are operating at spending levels negotiated and passed in early 2024, in the prior fiscal year. Six months in, appropriators have yet to reach a bipartisan agreement on spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends after September.

Nevada and national Democrats have argued that the funding deadline is Republicans’ problem to solve.

“They are in the majority,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) said in an interview. “There are consequences to the election, and they have the responsibility to govern, regardless of party.”

House Republicans can only lose two votes to win a majority vote, and as there are a handful of hard-line Republicans who typically vote against every continuing resolution — and because the Senate filibuster requires 60 votes in the upper chamber — Democratic support will be necessary to fund the government even though Republicans control both chambers and the White House. 

Both Nevada senators, in brief interviews, said they wanted to see a bill before fully commenting, but were opposed to government shutdowns and were hopeful that Republicans would bring Democrats deeper into negotiations.

“We shouldn’t be shutting down the government,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) said.

Currently, appropriators are weighing a three-month stopgap or a “full-year” continuing resolution, which would maintain 2024 funding levels through the rest of the 2025 fiscal year — though a spending deal could still be negotiated. While the top members of the Appropriations Committee in each chamber are trying to settle on a topline figure, House Republican leaders plan to put a full-year continuing resolution on the floor this week.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), an appropriator, said that although she’d have to see the text of any spending bill before deciding how to vote, she in general does not favor a full-year continuing resolution. Lee, who sits on the defense subcommittee, said such a bill would leave the military underfunded, keeping its budget flat even though costs have risen.

“I think a year-round CR is incredibly dangerous — especially given all of our defense needs and how behind we are,” she said.

Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), meanwhile, is awaiting legislative text.

“The congresswoman is withholding comment until she has seen what is in the continuing resolution, which has yet to be determined," her spokesperson Dick Cooper said.

Negotiations are stuck — Democrats want assurances that the executive branch will actually spend the money appropriated by Congress, given that Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have cancelled various congressionally authorized contracts and payments. 

Many Democrats feel unmotivated to make a deal with a Republican Party and presidential administration that they believe is ignoring the separation of powers by usurping Congress’ power of the purse. At the same time, Democrats are traditionally opposed to government shutdowns because of the havoc they wreak in states, and many are reasonably squeamish about the thought of permitting one to occur. 

“No president has the power to withhold funding that's approved by Congress,” Horsford said. “And so as I go into this [vote], that's one of the things that I'm going to be looking at very closely, because it means that we can't just shut down federal agencies or shutter office buildings. If he wants to do that, he has to get congressional approval to do so.”

But Republicans have made it clear there won’t be any DOGE-specific language compelling spending — and Lee said that’s already part of her calculations.

“It's not going to be a red line for me,” she said, adding that DOGE constraints in an appropriations bill are unrealistic. “It might be for other people, but it's not for me.”

The specter of who would be blamed for a shutdown — and the persistent frustrations of the Democratic base over perceived inadequacy from their members of Congress in standing up to Trump — complicate the dynamics as well.

In weighing the merits, Lee said she hopes Democratic appropriations leaders can negotiate the addition of some anomalies — add-ons or funding increases for certain programs — or ensure that sequestration does not take place. Sequestration was negotiated in a 2023 spending deal negotiated between President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), when Republicans agreed to raise the debt limit in exchange for, among other things, automatic cuts across the budget if Congress continues to pass continuing resolutions rather than actual appropriations bills.

Absent new wrinkles, Lee said it would be difficult to support a clean full-year continuing resolution.

“I don't think any of us want a government shutdown, but … we would have to get something out of a year-round CR,” Lee said. “We would have to get a win out of that.”

But if a full-year continuing resolution does pass the House, Democratic senators will need to consider if a negotiated spending deal is feasible, or if averting a government shutdown is their primary objective.

“It’s on [Republicans],” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said. “They need to come to us [and] work with us in a bipartisan way. I don't want a shutdown, [but] they haven't even talked about what they're willing to do.”