D.C. Democrats have always ruled the shutdown game. When they are in charge of Congress, they are positively allergic to passing a budget, let alone a balanced one. They prefer to clobber Republicans over the head with shutdown showmanship, ultimately getting their spendthrift way while reaping the fringe benefit of demolished approval ratings for their rival party.
Here’s how it works: Democrats sit on their hands and do nothing about spending until the budget deadline looms. Once they are operating in a time-crisis setting, Democrats put forth a grotesque, bloated, and usually immoral omnibus spending bill rife with grift for their friends and economic incontinence. Republicans naturally recoil at this abomination and refuse to vote for it. Democrats and their media allies then bray that Republicans are obstructionists.
If the deadline passes without an agreement, the blame is uniformly heaped upon the Republicans. It is always they, never the blameless Democrats, who shut down the government, by refusing to pass the perfectly good spending resolution the Democrats produced. If there is a Democrat president, he does his part by making the shutdown as absurdly public and painful as possible. Who can forget Barack Obama somehow finding employees who were magically exempt from furlough to put up fences around open-air monuments and parks? And to enforce closure of 1,100 square miles of open ocean off the coast of Florida?
The compounded applied pressure — generally combined with a greasy offering of pork — is intense enough to shake loose just enough persuadable Republicans to pass everything the Democrats want. In fact, Republicans were savaged and rolled with this technique enough times that after a while, all the Democrats had to do was threaten to shut down the government to get enough GOP senators to capitulate.
But things are different now. Democrats aren’t in power in Congress or the White House, and their media arm has finally lied itself out of relevance. On Tuesday, the Republicans in control of the U.S. House passed a continuing resolution that would keep the government running until this summer — without profligate spending increases — and passed it along to their colleagues in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor Wednesday, still trying to play the Democrats’ game of blaming the Republicans for his party’s obstructionism. “Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort,” droned Schumer dolorously. But alas, those dastardly 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.” Republicans brought this shutdown upon themselves, you see.
Meanwhile, said Schumer, the virtuous Democrats were “unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass.” Finally, he expressed his fervent hope that “our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.”
But somehow, the blame does not seem to be falling on the Republicans this time.
“With Schumer saying that Democrats are not ready to proceed, the Democrats hold the cards,” explains ABC News Delaware affiliate 6ABC. “If they do not furnish the votes to clear this procedural hurdle and get on to the bill, things could be at a stand still, and a shut down could be on the horizon.”
Meanwhile, House Democrats are urging their Senate colleagues to vote no on the funding bill they almost unanimously opposed when it passed through the House on Tuesday evening.
“House Democrats are very clear. We’re asking Senate Democrats to vote ‘no’ on this continuing resolution, which is not clean, and it makes cuts across the board,” said Vice Chair Ted Lieu, flanked by five other members of House leadership at a press conference at the Issues Conference at the Lansdowne Resort. Lieu’s comments came before Schumer pushed for a 30-day clean stopgap bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that conversations are “continuing” with Schumer all the way down to rank-and-file Democratic members about keeping the Democratic caucus united against the bill.
“The House Democratic position is crystal clear as evidenced by the strong vote of opposition that we took yesterday on the House floor opposing the Trump-Musk-Johnson reckless Republican spending bill,” Jeffries said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, having done his part with writing and passing the lower chamber resolution, released this killer video today in support of his Senate counterpart. Behold the towering hypocracy of Congressional Democrats:
Nothing to see here
Just a video of Democrats opposing government shutdowns
Except now they’re trying to shut down Trump’s government to stop DOGE cuts & ICE deportations
Hypocrites!
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 11, 2025
Related: Flailing Democrats Turn to Yet Another Once-Effective Technique
Will we see the Schumer Shutdown take hold this Friday? Or will Republicans be blamed for Democrat subterfuge as usual? Stay tuned!
