Some Senate Democrats are saying that they won’t vote for any federal funding bill without guardrails to ensure the end of the Iran war, teeing up a fight with the Trump administration ahead of a Dec. 11 government funding deadline.

The strategy sets up a potential government shutdown in December, before Democrats take the majority in either chamber of Congress.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Jewish Insider on Monday that any funding bill should include provisions to ensure that no appropriations are used to continue the Iran war — and that any shutdown that could happen would be President Donald Trump’s responsibility.

“I think we should come up with a funding bill that does things like replenishes munitions … all the stuff that we need to do as a nation, but say, ‘the war is illegal, until you get [congressional] authorization’ — I think we should put in a provision that says, ‘no funding for a war in Iran unless you get an authorization from Congress,’” Kaine said.

“If the president decides, ‘I’d rather wage an illegal war than fund the American government in the way the American public overwhelmingly told us that they want to do” — then that’ll be on them,” he continued.

Midterm exit polls showed a majority of voters disapproved of the Iran war.

Kaine described such a strategy as a last resort in light of the administration ignoring the war powers resolutions passed by Congress, but said, “if [Trump is] ignoring the law, then this is the only other option that we have.”

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) said in a letter over the weekend that the Senate should reject “any [funding] package that includes another cent for [the Iran] war.”

“I believe we would abdicate our responsibility if we voted to provide billions of additional dollars for President Trump’s war of choice in Iran,” Bennet said. “The stakes are too high for us to fall into our usual shutdown politics. Instead, we should act in a bipartisan manner to forcefully reject the Administration’s request for additional funding for the Iran war,” he continued.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has floated a potential run for Senate majority leader, said he wouldn’t vote for “anything that provides any funding to fuel the war in Iran … If the president wants to tell the country that he’s prepared to shut down the United States government in order to conduct an illegal and senseless war in Iran, that will be his choice.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told JI that he’s “prepared to vote against appropriations that could be used for the Iran war — that’s as far as I’m willing to go for now.”

Blumenthal also noted that he’d voted against the National Defense Authorization Act in the Armed Services Committee earlier this year for the first time in 16 years. 

“I am against any additional funding — whether it’s the $60 or $80 million that has been specifically requested [for the Iran war], or the NDAA. We have the power of the purse to stop this war. We must stop the war,” Blumenthal said. “It’s a last resort, but this administration has flouted the law so egregiously we have to use it. And, obviously the War Powers Act.”

Prominent House Democrats, including Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), are also pushing for Congress to reject any funding for the Iran war.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) did not go as far as some of his colleagues but called government funding one potential point of leverage for Democrats.

“I want to see Donald Trump figure out his way out of this. He got into this war — who knows why. Every few days it was a new reason,” Kelly told JI. “We have tools that we could use to put some pressure on him, [the appropriations process] being one of them.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking member and incoming chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, likewise said that “we are going to look at every tool we have available to us to bring this disastrous war to an end.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told JI, “war funding is going to be a big issue for me — to be continued.”

Not all Senate Democrats seem on board with a potential shutdown, however.

“We ought to put a war powers resolution on the floor. The voters are very clear that we need to end this war. I support efforts to end the war,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said. But he suggested that he was skeptical of a potential government shutdown, adding, when pressed: “We should do everything we can to fund the government.”