House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (New York) delivers remarks with fellow House Democrats during a rally on the House steps on Wednesday at the Capitol. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post
Congressional Democrats find themselves in an unusual position these days: cheering on a United States Government shutdown.
The party, known for its pro-government posture and defence of the federal workforce, has rallied around a strategy of refusing to fund the Government unless Republican leaders grant concessions on healthcare spending.
Even some of the normally staid moderates in Congress are echoing the hardball rhetoric of the Democratic leadership, presenting a rare, unified front after months of infighting.
“The Republican healthcare crisis is immoral in nature, and Democrats are fighting hard to reverse it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said during a news conference yesterday.
“Cruelty is the point when it comes to the Republican Party.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) has held a similar position, saying on the Senate floor that “Republicans tried to bully” Democrats into supporting their proposal but that they still have not worked to earn at least seven Democratic votes.
It’s a remarkable shift for Senate Democrats in particular, who six months ago couldn’t agree whether to stand in the way of another potential shutdown.
In March, Schumer decided it was riskier to allow Trump and Elon Musk, then the head of the US Doge Service, even more leeway to drastically slash government programmes and benefits.
He counselled Democrats to keep the Government funded, and the party’s base has never forgiven him.
Still, there were some signs yesterday that more moderate Senate Democrats are seeking a way out of the impasse.
A large bipartisan group of senators discussed a path forward on the Senate floor, with some Democrats floating a shorter-term funding bill to reopen the Government while continuing healthcare negotiations.
Those talks are very preliminary, however, and many Democrats across the Capitol say they fear they can’t trust a handshake deal with congressional Republicans and US President Donald Trump.
“Is a deal really a deal?” Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) said Democrats are asking. “If we do a deal, will everybody abide by it, including [Trump]?”
To keep the pressure on, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) plans to force daily votes on the Bill to reopen the Government, betting that pressure will mount on more moderate Democrats to back off their demands as the pain of a shutdown mounts.
Three Senate Democrats voted again yesterday for the GOP plan to fund the Government, and just five more would need to defect for that Bill to pass.
But Democrats do not appear to be backing down.
Many have largely united around demanding an extension of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, which expire at the end of this year, and a reversal of cuts to Medicaid enacted as part of Trump’s tax-and-immigration Bill.
“I’m hoping that people don’t die because Republicans and Donald Trump are shutting down this damn government,” said Senator Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), a moderate swing-state senator who is not known for using strong language.
Rosen said Trump is a “baby” who won’t negotiate or listen.
“We’ve watched President Trump do what he’s doing to this country,” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said when asked to explain why Senate Democrats are open to allowing funding to lapse this time around.
The Democratic strategy to lean into the shutdown is not without considerable risks.
No one knows how long the shutdown will last, or which political party will ultimately shoulder the blame for the break in government programmes.
The Trump Administration has threatened to fire even more federal workers, which could hurt Democrats’ policy goals.
And the position is a break with past Democratic arguments that permitting a shutdown is practicing irresponsible politics.
“They got their base breathing down their neck about standing up to Trump,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).
Graham said he knows “how this movie ends”, having lived through a 2018 GOP-spurred shutdown where his party hoped voters would rally around their demand for a border wall. “This will be a gigantic flop.”
Senate and House Democrats are also aware that Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought could make good on his threat to begin firing federal workers as soon today, which could inflict political pain.
Yesterday, Vought announced he was freezing US$18 billion in infrastructure funds to New York City - interpreted as a shot at Schumer and Jeffries - as well as cancelling another US$8b in green energy spending that affects 16 blue states.
Vought also announced on a call with House Republicans that firings of federal workers would come over the next couple of days, and that funding for a nutritional programme for low-income women, infants and children would expire next week, according to three people on the call.
“This is clear political retribution,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).
“We actually have an obligation to resist. We have an obligation to not comply and participate in this corruption, because by participating in it and by bowing to it, we enable it.”
Many Democrats believe these firings would be deeply unpopular, given polling on earlier Trump Administration layoffs, and would turn voters against Republicans, not Democrats, according to multiple people familiar with internal caucus discussions across the Capitol.
Representative Pete Aguilar (D-California) went further, to suggest that laid-off infrastructure workers who commute into New York from New Jersey for construction projects could affect the New Jersey gubernatorial election next month.
Senators representing states with many federal workers who could be affected by Trump’s threat to fire “a lot” of them in a shutdown have also projected confidence.
“I hear from federal workers and they’ve been on a slow shutdown firing since the beginning of this Administration,” said Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), a centrist whose state is home to thousands of federal workers.
“They want us to push back.”
Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine), the one Democrat who last month voted with House Republicans to keep the Government open, blamed his leadership yesterday for listening to “far-left groups” who are demanding Democrats “put on a show of their opposition to President Trump”.
“The shutdown is hurting Americans and our economy, and the irony is it has only handed more power to the President,” he said.
Republicans are flabbergasted by the Democratic position.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) have offered a relatively straightforward continuing resolution funding the Government for the next seven weeks that also includes more money for lawmakers’ safety following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
“Our Democrat colleagues in the House have been around here the last few days, flailing around celebrating the fact that they voted to shut down the Government,” Thune told reporters. “How ironic.”
Notably, Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiating an extension of the ACA subsidies after the Government is funded.
Democrats do not trust their Republican counterparts to keep that promise.
“We think when they say ‘later,’ they mean ‘never,’” Schumer said on Tuesday after the White House meeting with Trump. “We have to do it now.”
Democrats are far less divided than they were about six months ago when Schumer gathered enough votes in the Senate to keep the government running, despite all House Democrats but one voting against the funding measure.
Schumer faced stinging critiques from Democratic figures including Jeffries and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) - as well as base voters - for failing to use his leverage at the time to extract a concession from GOP leaders and Trump in exchange for Democratic votes.
This time has been different.
Jeffries and Schumer hammered out a joint strategy early on and have been in constant communication.
Republican passage of a tax-and-immigration Bill that slashed Medicaid inspired them to demand the GOP move their way on health care.
The Democratic leaders have shared internal polling over the past month that consistently showed that voters would blame Trump for the shutdown, Schumer said on Wednesday.
Public polling has shown that voters trust Republicans over Democrats to handle many policy issues but trust Democrats more on healthcare.
A New York Times poll released on Wednesday showed that Independent voters were also twice as likely to blame Trump for a shutdown - but overall, respondents were equally likely to blame both parties for the impasse.
Jeffries said to his caucus in a closed-door meeting last month that the funding fight would centre on healthcare, a pitch that received notable pushback from Democrats who wanted the argument to extend beyond the issue.
Jeffries stayed on point, retorting that if Democrats were “going to lean into the [funding] fight, we need to win the fight”, according to multiple people in attendance.
Confidence grew among House Democrats that Schumer would stay the course after Schumer and Jeffries held a joint news conference later that week.
Democrats’ resolve only hardened to hold the line after Trump posted a fake video on Tuesday of Schumer and Jeffries at a news conference outside the White House following an unsuccessful meeting earlier in the day.
The racist post featured Schumer saying things about benefits for immigrants that he hadn’t actually said and Jeffries wearing a sombrero he hadn’t actually been wearing.
“Group chats were on fire after Trump posted that video. He’s not taking this seriously, and it only emboldened us, including some of us moderates, to hold the line,” one House Democrat said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“The world has changed” since March, Schumer said on the Senate floor on Wednesday, citing the GOP’s tax cut Bill that slashed Medicaid funding, as well as the Administration’s moves to cancel congressional spending. “Not once was there any bipartisan discussion or talk on this Bill.”
Asked yesterday whether he was confident Schumer could hold his caucus together to avoid voting for a funding bill that does not address extending the ACA subsidies, Jeffries simply replied, “Yes”.
Republicans believe they hold the upper hand because they are offering a relatively straightforward funding measure to give lawmakers time to complete the appropriations process.
But House GOP leaders instructed members in a conference call on Tuesday to avoid wading into healthcare, citing polling that shows their messaging resonates only if they steer clear of that issue.
Leaders also told Republicans to remain engaged, including by flooding local and national airwaves in interviews by pointing to Democrats previously criticising shutdowns as they try to control the narrative.
House Republicans kept their pledge to attack Democrats with their campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, launching ads targeting 25 vulnerable House Democrats in their districts.
“Democrats in Congress have dragged our country into another reckless shutdown to satisfy their far-left base. That is the truth,” Johnson said yesterday.
- Mariana Alfaro, Kadia Goba and Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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