Democrats appear poised to force a government shutdown. House Republicans have passed a clean bill to continue financing the government beyond the end of the fiscal year, but Senator Chuck Schumer is digging in his heels in the upper chamber, where any government financing bill will require the votes of at least seven Democrats. Current funding runs out at the end of Tuesday, but a much-publicized meeting with the White House on Monday ended with Schumer citing “very large differences.”
Ostensibly, Democrats are trying to pressure Republicans on health care. Joe Biden used Covid-era spending bills as an excuse to expand Obamacare subsidies to help cover the skyrocketing premiums caused by the onerous regulations of the national health care law. Those enhanced subsidies were supposed to be temporary and were set to expire at the end of 2025. Democrats want them extended. In addition, Democrats are screaming bloody murder about modest good-government reforms to Medicaid aimed at verifying addresses of recipients, making sure illegal immigrants don’t get covered, and requiring able-bodied enrollees to work part-time jobs to receive coverage.
What the shutdown talk is really about, however, is that Schumer is under heavy pressure from his base to demonstrate that Democrats are willing to take the fight to Trump, responding to the progressive criticisms that they are flailing about as Trump imposes his will. They just view health care spending as the best pretext.
Democrats are confident that they can work with their allies in the media to blame any shutdown on Republicans, which they have had success with in the past. But historically, the public has tended to place the blame on the party that rejects a clean bill and forces a shutdown to make policy demands on issues that aren’t directly related to disagreements over the government spending levels. In this case, Democrats aren’t even asking to restore funding that was cut — they are demanding that Republicans expand a program they have been opposing for the past 16 years.
Some Democrats are pointing to the 2013 shutdown resulting from the Republican effort to defund Obamacare for inspiration. At that time, Republicans were said to have lost the fight politically, but they still came back in 2014 to take over the Senate, gaining nine seats.
However, the story of 2014 is more a story of the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, with its failed website, its skyrocketing premiums, and the fact that millions of individuals lost health insurance plans that they liked despite Barack Obama’s promises that they would not. The very real damage caused by Obamacare overwhelmed any sour memories voters had about the shutdown.
Democrats may turn out to be right in their calculation that any hit they take from the shutdown would, at worst, be short-lived. And in the meantime, they can use the conflict to energize their demoralized base heading into an election year. But there is also a risk that this will backfire spectacularly.
Given that they will almost certainly have to cave and agree to fund the government eventually, all their tough talk now will only reinforce the sense of disillusionment among their base when that moment inevitably comes.
Additionally, while they are claiming to be frustrated with Trump’s efforts to eliminate agencies that he doesn’t like, a government shutdown fight would give him clearer discretionary power. Already, in a savvy preemptive move by Trump, the White House Office of Management and Budget has instructed agencies to prepare for mass layoffs of federal workers in the case of any shutdown.
It’s possible that all the public posturing is just some brinkmanship that will end with a last-minute deal, if even a short-term measure that buys more time for negotiations. At this time, however, all signs are pointing toward Democrats’ being determined to shut down the government.