The likelihood of a government shutdown should have been reduced to almost nothing when President Trump asked Congress to “pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill” last week.
Conservatives who are dead set on slashing expenditure are usually the ones threatening a government shutdown, so who better than Trump to sway them and keep the lights on?
The fact that the possibility of a government shutdown has not diminished is, then, a clear indication of how drastically Trump has disrupted Washington throughout the last six weeks. Actually, it may have gone up, if my reporting is to be believed.
This time around, Democrats are eager to buck Trump and his appointee, billionaire Elon Musk, over cutbacks to the Department of Government Efficiency.
Multiple Democratic sources told me over the weekend that senior House Democrats have been privately polling their members on the possibility of a government shutdown over DOGE cuts over the past few days.
There has been minimal pushback thus far.
Voting for a “clean” budget plan would be the same as giving the green light to Musk’s contentious work, according to Democrats of all stripes, including several centrists who have always been strongly against the shutdown. They think it would be better than doing nothing at all to prevent Republicans from getting the votes they need to keep the agencies running.
An anonymous senior House Democratic aide told me, “Nobody wants a shutdown, but they don’t feel like aiding and abetting what’s happening, with Musk and Trump taking a wrecking ball to health care in particular.” I spoke to others like him because I wanted to hear candid information about party conversations. “What gives us the right to say that?”
It gets to be ridiculous, and you have to stand up for yourself at some point, according to a top Democratic senator. Until September, I will not be handing them an unlimited budget.
Looking back even a few weeks, that is a significant change. Several prominent Democratic officials on both sides of the Capitol agreed with my assessment when I publicly criticized their plan to use the March 14 government funding deadline as a platform to oppose Musk in early February.
Their party would suffer politically from a Democratic-initiated shutdown, and Musk would get even more ability to cut and burn through government agencies, they agreed. They were also angry that the base didn’t recognize that experimenting with explosives wasn’t the way to go.
Now that we’re less than two weeks away from the financing deadline?
“People now feel like the more perilous position is giving votes without the perception there’s been any change in accountability,” a second senior House Democratic official told me. “Right now, the incentive structure does not allow us to cast votes in their favor.”
Part of the change may have been the result of strategic bargaining, I suppose. Democrats are demanding that Republicans limit Musk’s policy flexibility, while Republicans are adamantly opposed to the idea. “A non-starter and battle they lost to the American people,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said on Monday.
Given their control of the House, Senate, and White House, Democratic leaders have every motive to increase the pressure on their GOP counterparts to produce as many votes as possible. Even if there is no genuine danger of a shutdown, there is still no excuse to ease up on them.
Even behind closed doors, House Democrats aren’t saying anything like that. During a recent meeting with committee leaders, top appropriator Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut became enraged about Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to force them to approve the clean funding extension. Jeffries is the minority leader in the House of Representatives.
She yelled out, “No fucking way!” according to someone in the room who informed me. Since Jeffries did not resist, his leadership is now testing the members’ will to see the battle through to the end.
The usual pattern is for shutdown threatening to escalate from the political extremes of both parties until party leaders can no longer ignore it for fear of losing their own jobs. But this time the fires are starting at the top, where frustration with the Trump-Musk administration’s rapid efforts to dismantle government agencies and the slow legal process to halt them is on the rise.
There are some senior Democrats in the House who think that the effects of the DOGE cutbacks have already caused a shutdown and that approving a clean budget extension would just serve to continue things as they are and maybe weaken the arguments that are currently being heard against Trump and Musk.
In addition, I’ve heard the Democrats have been given a boost by recent polls that suggest the public is beginning to turn against DOGE. This is supposedly due to the increased awareness among Americans about the possibility of benefit cuts and the dismissal of veterans from their employment. Not to mention the recent town-hall protests, when people vehemently against DOGE delivered a frank assessment to Republican lawmakers.
Among the most crucial messages reaching Democrats at all levels is the urgent need to put up a fight, and not only from the liberal base but also from what they perceive as more moderate quarters, including fundraisers, strategists, and constituents.