Sen. Ted Cruz says he knows exactly what Chuck Schumer plans to do this fall, and he is willing to bet cash on it. The Texas Republican told CNBC on Tuesday that the Senate minority leader will deliberately shut down the federal government on Oct. 1, leaving it closed through Election Day so Democrats can pin the chaos on the party in power.

Cruz laid out the case on CNBC's "Squawk Box," pointing to last year's pre-election shutdown as the template. Federal funding expires Sept. 30. Cruz said Schumer will refuse to cut a deal, force a lapse in appropriations, and let the consequences, including hours-long airport lines, do the political work for him heading into November.

The prediction lands at a tense moment. The Department of Homeland Security is already operating under a partial shutdown. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned Tuesday that the department will be unable to pay employee salaries beginning early next month. And Republican strategists, including former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, have openly acknowledged that the midterm landscape favors the opposition party, as The Hill reported.

Cruz's $100 wager

Cruz did not mince words. He framed Schumer's strategy as a repeat of the minority leader's prior playbook, then offered a public bet:

"On Sept. 30, funding for the federal government will end. Chuck Schumer is not a creative guy, he's not hard to predict. Last year, right before the election, what did Schumer do? He shut the whole government down, and the Democrats believe that shutdown helped them politically, and it benefited them in New Jersey and Virginia."

He went further, laying out the scenario in detail:

"I will wager, right now, $100, that Schumer intends, on Oct. 1, to do the same thing, to shut the whole federal government down for a month, so that on Election Day... the government is shut down, you have four-hour lines again in airports, and the Democrats can say, 'See, the Republicans are in charge, they don't know what they're doing.'"

The prior shutdown Cruz referenced lasted more than a month. He said Democrats walked away from that fight believing the disruption had helped their candidates in key states.

Schumer's track record on shutdowns

Cruz's accusation gains weight when measured against Schumer's own history. The minority leader has repeatedly used government funding as leverage, and has faced criticism from both sides when the gambit fell short.

In an earlier shutdown fight, Reuters reported that Schumer agreed to end a three-day government shutdown after choosing to side with moderate Senate Democrats rather than left-wing members who wanted a tougher standoff over protections for Dreamers. Moderate Democrats facing re-election in states Trump had carried feared that prolonging the shutdown over immigration would damage them at the ballot box.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee called that deal "madness" and a "cave" that was "led by weak-kneed, right-of-center Democrats." Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez said at the time: "When it comes to immigrants, Latinos and their families, Democrats are still not willing to go to the mat."

That episode revealed a pattern. Schumer pushes confrontation to extract political value, then retreats when moderate members get nervous, but only after the disruption has already grabbed headlines. Cruz's argument is that Schumer learned the wrong lesson from those episodes: not that shutdowns are reckless, but that they are useful, especially when Republicans hold the White House and Congress.

The DHS shutdown already underway

The broader government funding fight does not exist in a vacuum. A partial DHS shutdown is already straining federal operations. Mullin's warning that employee salaries could go unpaid early next month raises the stakes considerably. DHS personnel, border agents, TSA screeners, immigration officers, are the front line of national security.

Senate Republicans have already clashed with Schumer over attempts to fund TSA while stripping ICE of resources, a maneuver conservatives viewed as a transparent effort to weaponize the shutdown against immigration enforcement.

Cruz discussed the DHS shutdown during his CNBC appearance as well, tying it directly to the larger spending confrontation he expects in October. If DHS remains unfunded when the rest of the government's appropriations lapse on Sept. 30, the combined disruption could be severe, and Schumer, Cruz argued, knows it.

Schumer has also been at the center of a separate spending fight in which House Democrats rejected an agreement he reached with the White House, exposing internal fractures over how far to push fiscal confrontations.

Midterm headwinds for the GOP

Republicans are not pretending the political environment is easy. President Trump's approval rating sits at 40.8 percent, with disapproval at 56.3 percent, according to a Decision Desk HQ polling average. Midterm elections historically punish the party in power, and this cycle shows no signs of breaking that pattern.

McEnany acknowledged the challenge earlier this month on "Fox & Friends Weekend":

"Not to put too rosy a picture on it though, midterms will be hard for Republicans. It's just historically difficult to win when you're in power, but I would like my odds more with this president than prior presidents."

That candid assessment underscores why Cruz's warning matters. If Republicans already face structural disadvantages, a government shutdown that drags into November would hand Democrats a ready-made talking point, one that shifts blame away from the minority party that blocked the spending bills and onto the majority that couldn't keep the lights on.

Schumer's office was contacted for comment. The Hill did not report receiving a response.

The political incentive structure

Cruz's prediction is ultimately about incentives. Democrats have little reason to cooperate on a clean funding bill if they believe a shutdown helps them at the polls. The minority party does not bear the governing burden. Voters blame the party in charge when services stop, lines grow, and paychecks freeze, regardless of who actually blocked the legislation.

Schumer has played this game before. He has previously attached policy demands to funding negotiations in ways designed to force Republicans into a lose-lose choice: accept the conditions or absorb the blame for a shutdown.

Cruz's framing puts the responsibility squarely on the minority leader's shoulders months before the deadline arrives. Whether that early warning changes the dynamic depends on whether Republican leadership can force a clean vote, and whether the public pays attention to who is actually blocking the deal.

The broader pattern of Schumer's approach to ICE and immigration enforcement has also drawn scrutiny. Earlier this year, he warned that ICE enforcement at airports would cause "trouble", a prediction that did not age well when the disruptions he forecast failed to materialize.

What to watch

The Sept. 30 funding deadline is now the date circled on every calendar in Washington. Cruz has laid down a marker. If Schumer follows the playbook Cruz described, Republicans will at least be able to say they saw it coming. The question is whether seeing it coming is enough to stop it, or whether the minority leader calculates, once again, that the political reward of a shutdown outweighs the cost to the country.

When a senator bets a hundred dollars on his opponent's next move, it is not because the play is hard to see. It is because the other side has already run it once and gotten away with it.