In the throes of all-out panic over the Department of Government Efficiency’s cavity searches of federal agencies to find wasted or misappropriated dollars, a handful of congressional Democrats have come up with another masterful plan. Some are flirting with the idea of a government shutdown. This odd and rather ironic idea prompted even CNN analyst Mark Preston to ask, “How can you argue for a government shutdown when you’re arguing about government being cut?” No one seems to be able to explain the rationale. Sabotaging something in order to save it is a novel political strategy, to be sure.
A regular feature of Washington, DC, politics for quite a few years now has been the almost annual scramble to avoid a government shutdown. Appropriations bills don’t get passed in time, the debt ceiling looms, or the Republican House Freedom Caucus threatens not to play ball in the invariably futile attempt to rein in spending. Every time the prospect of a government shutdown appears on the horizon, Democrats look around for pearls to clutch and wail that civilization will come to an end without the federal government to keep it going.
Donald Trump is back in the White House now, though, so all bets are off. What would, at any other time, be considered reckless and irresponsible by Democrats is suddenly a tactic worth contemplating, such is the danger posed by the mean Orange Man.
Throughout history, there are countless examples of a national leader or a political party wildly, and often falsely, exaggerating an issue to justify some drastic measure that must be undertaken. This is often how wars or genocides get started. Of course, nothing nearly as serious or tragic is at stake here, but the modus operandi is the same: overstate and overdramatize the situation to make the public believe the intended response is appropriate and proportional. Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) provided a good example of this type of gaslighting during a Feb. 9 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press:
“I’ve worked through multiple government shutdowns. I will be the last person to want to get to that stage. But we are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis, seeing this administration taking steps that are so clearly illegal – and until we see a change in that behavior, we should not allow and condone that, nor should we assist in that.”
Never mind that there isn’t a constitutional scholar of sound mind and body in the entire country who would claim America is anywhere near a constitutional crisis. Never mind that nobody can point to any specific illegality.
The Irony of a Government Shutdown
The irony hasn’t been lost on political pundits and commentators. Law professor Jonathan Turley, writing on X, described Kim’s comments as “a curious Democratic threat to an Administration that wants less government,” adding, “It is akin to threatening vegans with a beef ban.”
Indeed, the reaction of most conservatives and libertarians to the prospect of a government shutdown is, don’t threaten me with a good time.
Not everyone is on board with this bizarre idea, though. Cory Booker, New Jersey’s other Democrat senator, told CNN’s Dana Bash that his party is “not looking to shut down the government.” He went on, “The Republican Party has shown year after year that they’re the party of shutdowns. They’re the party of government chaos.”
Trump has already made a dent in the federal workforce. Shuttering the government, even for a week or two, may well give him the excuse he needs to lay off more bureaucratic staff. Once they have vacated their offices and gone home to wait out the shutdown – and the world continues to turn without them behind their desks, the golden opportunity is there. The president may simply do what he has already successfully done with thousands of others. Open this email and click here to collect a few months’ pay and, thank you, don’t come back.
This time around, Democrats seem to be finding out that resistance is futile, and they are tying themselves in knots, trying to come up with ways to stop Trump. This one is likely to backfire. In the past, congressional Democrats have argued that a government shutdown is a betrayal of the American people, that the pause of essential government services harms those in need, and so on. Turley, in his X post, observed that Democratic logic for a shutdown “is the same logic as the Vietnam approach that ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.’” With their popularity already suffering, the more progressive Democrats seem to have decided that it has become necessary to destroy their own party to save it.
