US Senate Democrats to clear way for stopgap bill and avert shutdown

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo via Mayer Tawfik via Unsplash

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Top U.S. Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer on Thursday said he would vote to advance a stopgap funding bill, signaling that his party would provide the votes to avert a government shutdown.

"I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down," he said in Congress.

Blocking the bill would have required the support of at least 41 of Schumer's Democrats and would have triggered a partial shutdown, which Democrats have long opposed as needless chaos. 

Their wariness of a shutdown was only elevated by Republican President Donald Trump's rapid-fire campaign to unilaterally shutter many federal operations, which Democrats note is already causing disruption.

 (Reporting by Richard Cowan and Costas Pitas; Editing by Scott Malone)