Last month, discussing legislation to keep the federal government open after March 14, I argued that “Democrats should insist that money appropriated by Congress in the bill actually gets spent. Otherwise, the bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” I still believe that. If I were a senator, I would filibuster the House Republican bill even though the shutdown deadline is here.
However, it appears that’s not going to happen. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly told his caucus he was going to vote for cloture and had enough votes to break any filibuster. Yet I’m not going to call them weak and spineless because they didn’t take my counsel. I’m going to save my anger for the Republicans hellbent on gutting the federal government who put the Democrats in a precarious position.
The argument for a Democratic filibuster is sound. It’s not about wanting to shut down the government. It does not treat federal workers as political pawns. It does not require an insistence on extraneous, unrealistic, ideological demands or inflexibility on spending levels. The case rests on a simple and reasonable need to ensure that the executive branch will execute what the legislative branch approves.
However, that sensible stance makes for complicated politics, so I can’t fault Schumer for making a different calculation.
The main concern about passing the House Republican bill is that short of judicial intervention, President Donald Trump can ignore the dollar figures and continue with his mass layoffs of federal workers and throttling of federal programs. What is a federal government shutdown but a temporary mass layoff and throttling of federal programs?
Any shutdown must end eventually. But in the aftermath, Trump and his bureaucratic goon Elon Musk could tell vast numbers of employees that they needn’t return to work, accelerating their plans to hollow out the federal government and embed MAGA loyalists in what remains of the civil service. In fact, WIRED reports, based on anonymous Republican sources, “that Musk has wanted a government shutdown … in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, essentially achieving a permanent shutdown.” During shutdowns, employees deemed “nonessential” stay home. Musk, who has said anyone nonessential shouldn’t be in government, could use a shutdown to take advantage of any nonessential classifications.
The resist-everything-everywhere-all-at-once argument theoretically compels Democrats to filibuster so that their fingerprints aren’t on any legislation that abets the Trump-Musk plan. But a shutdown can abet it, too. Moreover, a shutdown would trigger a blame-game dynamic in which Republicans can shift blame from Musk’s rampage to Democrats for the increased dysfunction. No matter what Democrats do, they risk public ire.
The basis of my shut-it-down argument last month was that with a reasonable and narrowly tailored demand, Democrats could escape blame, which may still be true. But I must concede Republicans have made the Democrats’ job harder by achieving near-unity around a measure that—if not quite a “clean” bill with no changes to existing spending levels—doesn’t codify radical DOGE-style cuts.
If House Republicans were unable to pass their bill, or if House and Senate Republicans weren’t in sync, or if there was a shockingly unpopular provision in the bill, the GOP would have a much harder time casting blame on Democrats for any shutdown. Now, Republicans can accurately say: We have a bill that would keep the government open, and if it fails, it’s because of a Democratic filibuster.
The challenge for Democrats trying to respond to the House Republican bill with a unified message was exemplified Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s brief floor statement:
Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input, any input, from Congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.
Filibustering a bill to keep the government open solely on the argument Democrats didn’t get any input is a very thin reed. It’s about process, not substance, which is no way to rally the public. I can only assume Schumer didn’t get more specific because he didn’t have party-wide consensus on drawing firm lines on including or removing particular provisions. And he didn’t have party-wide consensus because the “right” thing for Democrats to do is not clear-cut.
And the right thing for Democrats is not clear-cut because no matter what they do, Trump and Musk will continue to wage war on the civil service.
Pressuring Democrats to adopt your preferred counsel is a potentially productive course of action. It can pierce insular groupthink and give them confidence that the public will embrace a bold strategy. But that’s very different than torching Democrats if they adopt a different course in a challenging situation. That only helps Republicans deflect blame for their destructive acts.
