Past Democratic expressions of anguish deserve to be top of mind as the party talks itself into the notion that shutting down the government might be good.
Democrats know how to catastrophize a government shutdown. Indeed, during the last shutdown of any significant duration, Americans were bombarded with what Democratic lawmakers insisted were the unendurable consequences of the GOP’s failure to fund the government on terms acceptable to the Democrat-led House.
“This week, FBI agents released a report warning of dire effects of the shutdown on nearly every aspect of their work,” Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said near the end of a prolonged shutdown in early 2019. They write we don’t have funds to get drugs and guns off the street and to prosecute the violent gang and drug traffickers.” Beyond that, the prosecution of “child sexual exploitation cases” had ground to a halt. The U.S. hadn’t the wherewithal to “provide cybersecurity intelligence to protect the country against our foreign adversaries.”
“President Trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety, and well-being of the American people and withhold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent workers across the nation — many of them veterans,” she said alongside Senator Chuck Schumer in a joint televised appearance. “We don’t govern by temper tantrum,” Schumer agreed. “Federal workers are about to miss a paycheck. Some families can’t get a mortgage to buy a new home. Farmers and small businesses won’t get loans they desperately need.”
These and many, many other Democratic expressions of anguish deserve to be top of mind as the party talks itself into the notion that shutting down the government might be good for their party, if not the country.
Representative Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas) has rationalized herself into the contention that a government shutdown would somehow protect the federal workers at risk of being let go from their public sector jobs. Trump is “literally shutting down department anyway,” she mused. And if the public blames Democrats, so what? “They blame the Democrats for everything,” Crockett insisted.
This otherwise unrepresentative lawmaker’s diatribe crystallizes the illogic to which political parties that succumb to shutdown mania are prone.
“A series of federal courts have made it clear that, in their view, President Trump is acting illegally and not respecting the appropriations role of Congress,” said Delaware Senator Chris Coons (D.) in his effort to synthesize his opposition to past shutdowns with his openness to this one. “That puts us in a different place than we’ve been in my 15 years” in the upper chamber of Congress, he added.
“Anyone who is dumb enough to vote for this is sure as hell going to own the consequences,” progressive Congressman Jared Huffman (D. Calif.) warned Democrats who plan to vote for a House-passed continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government’s lights on until next September. “This bill is a permission slip to do so much destruction that will take us years and years to undo.”
“I took an oath to protect the Constitution. I cannot vote for the Republican plan to give unchecked power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” said Senator Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) of, we must remember, something as banal as a short-term CR.
Democrats are training their fire on one another more than the GOP, with John Fetterman-types maintaining consistency in opposing shutdowns because of the pain and inconvenience they cause and the activist class’s allies in Congress insisting that it would be worse to allow Donald Trump and Elon Musk to govern alongside a functioning legislature. If the government shuts down, Democrats will transition to blaming the GOP for failing to muster enough votes to overcome the Democrat-led filibuster that could tank this CR.
But government shutdowns end. And when they end, voters tend to cast blame for them on the party that wanted the shutdown in the first place (rationally enough). In 2018–2019, that was Donald Trump. This time around, it is without question the Democratic Party. And because the Democrats’ 47-seat minority in the Senate lacks much in the way of political leverage, it’s unlikely that the shutdown will end on their preferred terms.
In sum, “bold strategy, Cotton.” Can’t wait to see how this works itself out.