Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Republicans do not have enough Democratic votes to advance the GOP funding stopgap bill approved Tuesday.

Schumer’s declaration raises the prospects of a government shutdown this weekend. 

"Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that.",” Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. 

A “clean CR” refers to a continuing resolution that maintains spending at current levels. The House bill would keep the government funded through September but trim $13 billion in non-defense spending from the levels in the 2024 budget year and increase defense spending by $6 billion.

On Monday, House Democrats proposed an alternate bill that would keep the government at current funding levels for four weeks in order to give lawmakers more time to negotiate a more longterm bipartisan deal.

The government will partially shut down if a funding bill is not passed and signed by the president by 11:59 p.m. EDT Friday.

Schumer’s comments came around the same time that House Democrats slammed the spending plan and encouraged their Democratic Senate colleagues to vote against it.

“The partisan Republican spending bill cut funding for veterans, for health care, for nutritional assistance,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said during a news conference Wednesday. “It represented an across-the-board cut as it relates to non-defense discretionary funding important to the health, safety and economic wellbeing of the American people.”

While the Republican bill keeps spending levels roughly the same as last year, it does not include protections for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — the federal program that provides health care to 70 million Americans. 

On Tuesday, every House Republican except Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted for the legislation. Every House Democrat, except Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, voted against it.

For the stopgap to succeed, Senate Republicans need several Democrats to join them in order to break the filibuster. 

“We are faced with two prongs,” said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass. “One, we have a blank check to [the U.S. Doge Service] to keep on DOGE-ing and taking a chainsaw to the very programs that American families are saying they want us to protect.”

She said if the Republican bill had included protections for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, House Democrats would have voted for it.

“After the Trump administration said this will be a path to further cuts in spending, that’s a path to stealing taxpayer dollars,” she said, adding that House Democrats’ message to the Senate is to stand with them on the side of working families.

Despite Republicans having control of the House, Senate and White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Democrats would be blamed if they block the bill in the Senate and the government shuts down. 

“Chuck Schumer has a big decision to make: Is he going to cast a vote to keep the government open, or is he going to be blamed for shutting it down?” Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday. “And that’s clearly very simply what they have to decide, and I hope they do the right thing because government shutdowns — as they all said, they’re on video and have said a thousand times — is harmful for everybody. We don’t need that."