The Government-Shutdown Vote Is a GOP Trap for Democrats

Behind Mike Johnson lurks Elon Musk. Photo: Anna Moneymaker

Like most observers, I vacillate regularly as to whether House Speaker Mike Johnson is an unexpectedly shrewd legislative tactician or is instead Mr. Magoo, a bumbling backwoods pol who survives strictly by blind luck and subservience to Donald Trump. But as Congress moves this week toward a possible government shutdown, there are fresh signs that Johnson knows what he’s doing — or at least is listening to advisers or executive-branch paymasters who know what they are doing. He’s devising a trap for congressional Democrats that is leaving them irresolute and possibly more powerless than ever.

A stopgap spending bill enacted after a lot of difficulty last December expires on March 14. Before Trump’s inauguration, it looked as though the effort to keep the government operating past that date would be an existential crisis for congressional Republicans, divided as always between the hard-core House Freedom Caucus members (and their Senate counterparts) lusting for deep cuts in domestic spending and swing-district House members (and their own Senate counterparts) fearful of backlash to unpopular cuts. But since then, the executive branch via both Elon Musk’s DOGE and Russ Vought’s Office of Management and Budget — sometimes operating through Trump’s agency appointees and sometimes on their own — has rushed ahead with spending cuts and personnel firings on a vast scale, asserting powers that have triggered equally vast litigation over their constitutionality.

Suddenly, the right-wing pressure for achieving the demolition of the hated federal government (or at least the portions not devoted to deporting immigrants or intimidating Canada, Panama, and Greenland) via cuts in congressional spending bills has been relaxed significantly. And so it’s been easier for Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to line up votes for the continuing resolution (or CR, a measure extending current appropriations until the end of the fiscal year) that Trump himself recently endorsed.

But in anticipation of another close House vote in which Democrats cannot be counted on to help keep the government open, Johnson added conservative sweeteners to the CR, which isn’t “clean” (i.e., a simple extension of current funding levels for everything) as advertised but instead adds immediate money for defense and mass deportation and cuts domestic spending by $13 billion. House Democrats already inclined to vote “no” on the CR because it contains no language forcing the executive branch to actually spend the money appropriated (which would restrict the power of DOGE or OMB to unilaterally “freeze” spending, cancel grants or contracts, or fire personnel) now have even less motivation to keep the government open. And over the weekend, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries officially opposed the not-so-clean CR and Democrats began “whipping” a “no” vote.

If Johnson can’t wrangle his troops into near-unanimous support for his dirty CR (and Trump is leaning on them pretty hard), then it’s possible the government will shut down on March 14 and Republicans will get at least a good share of the blame since they control both congressional chambers. But if they do get the CR through the House and the fight shifts to the Senate, the political situation will be entirely different. To kill the CR, Democrats would have to launch a filibuster, and in that circumstance it would be much easier for Republicans to blame them for shutting down the federal government — despite the clear intention of the Trump administration to keep gutting the government if it remains open. If just seven Senate Democrats choose to join Republicans (or all but Rand Paul, who is demanding deeper cuts; he has effectively matched with Democrat John Fetterman, who has vowed to vote to avoid a shutdown), the CR will pass.

If Senate Democrats are put to the challenge and subsequently cave, they will have more than likely forfeited any real Democratic leverage for the remainder of 2025 beyond stirring up public unhappiness with Trump 2.0. Appropriations aside, most of Trump’s legislative agenda will be enacted via a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered. So the decision not to deploy a filibuster on the one crucial occasion it is available will represent an admission of powerlessness that won’t make rank-and-file Democrats happy.

One of the problems Democrats in both chambers face is a misalignment of messaging at this moment. House Democrats appear to have decided the fight against Medicaid cuts being threatened in the upcoming budget-reconciliation bill is the most politically salient argument they can make. But the CR doesn’t have any Medicaid cuts. And even if they find a way to shift the messaging to the threat posed by executive usurpation of congressional spending authority, is that an argument that will offset dismay over the government shutting down? Josh Marshall addressed this problem compellingly:

If you won’t provide the votes [to keep the government open], what are you demanding exactly? What’s necessary to get the votes to open it back up? I hear vague references to the “power of the purse”? I don’t think that’s going to cut it. I think you need to say, Elon’s got to go. He’s unpopular. Everyone understands what that means since they hear about him every day. But they just haven’t been making that case. And without that case, it’s probably not sustainable politically. Of course, you might not lay that groundwork if you weren’t planning to go to the mat over it anyway.

It’s a bit late in the day for House and Senate Democrats to come together on an “Elon’s got to go” message for filibustering a CR that is necessary to keep even a gutted federal government operating. So the trap being sprung by Republicans is to cast Democrats as the bad guys in a government-shutdown saga thoroughly controlled by Trump and his minions and allies on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Perhaps by admitting their powerlessness to do anything about it will ultimately expose Republicans to danger on the grounds that everything happening in Washington is their show, which means they “own” all the negative consequences down the road. But if “we can’t do anything” is how congressional Democrats choose to respond to their base’s demand to do something, they should at a minimum say it in one voice instead of flailing around in divided opposition to a spending measure they know will be enacted. More generally, getting outfoxed by Mike Johnson is a really bad look for a party already on the defensive.