Should Dems Help Keep The Government Open? Only If The Musk Coup Is Shut Down

Time to play hardball, draw a red line, do more than tough metaphors.

As seems to always be the case, the US government is hurtling toward yet another fiscal cliff, with current funding for the government set to run out when the digital clock clicks past 11:59:59 p.m. on March 14. (See how we got past that old “wait, which midnight?” problem?) To avoid a government shutdown, Congress will have to authorize another chunk of funding in a “continuing resolution” that keeps funding going. Usually, as is the case with the CR that expires March 14, such resolutions keep funding at existing rates, supposedly giving Congress time to finalize a real budget for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends September 30. But that often doesn’t get done, and it didn’t this time either, so we’re looking at yet another CR while the Republicans, now in charge of both houses, get their shit together. If there’s no CR, the government mostly shuts down, although “essential” workers and supervisors (including nearly everyone in the military) have to keep working without pay.

Since the GOP took control of the House in the 2022 election, we’ve managed to avoid shutdowns because Democrats, recognizing the harm shutdowns do to the economy, always joined the less-insane (but still plenty insane) Republicans in the House to pass a CR. That’s because even with the majority, the deeply crazy Republicans of the House Freedom Caucus demanded giant spending cuts that wouldn’t pass in the Senate before the bill would reach Joe Biden’s desk. Of course, that’s changed now, a little bit, with Donald Trump in the White House and a GOP majority in the Senate.

Thing is, even though the majority of House Republicans want a CR that slashes funding and would be terrible, the Freedom Caulkers want even deeper cuts that would be far more terrible-er, and Republicans in swing districts don’t want to go along with those, so once again the Republicans are divided and will likely need Democrats’ help again.

But this time around, Democrats have a very good reason not to go along unless they get something very basic: an end to all the criming by the Trump administration.

So here we are at a moment that will decide whether Democrats really are going to act like a goddamned opposition party: When the Republicans in both houses (the Senate needs seven Democrats to vote with Republicans) come asking Democrats to please please save them from their own extreme wing, Democrats need to make clear that they won’t vote for anything that doesn’t stop Donald Trump and his hench-dipshit Elon Musk from their unconstitutional actions to dismantle the federal government.

As TPM editor Josh Marshall puts it, it’s a pretty clear call:

I think the only reasonable position is “no help with your problem unless and until the criminal conduct stops.” And any deal needs to be enforceable.

That means no more impoundment of funds that Congress has allocated — for foreign aid through USAID, for the Education Department, for clean energy programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, for health research at HHS, for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and far more. Trump’s job is to faithfully execute the laws, and that includes spending what Congress passed in the way that Congress intended.

It also means no more trying to shut down entire agencies established by Congress, and no more arbitrary cuts to the federal workforce that ignore employee protections that are federal law, passed by — you guessed it — Congress.

It really is time for all of us with Democratic representatives and senators to tell them they have to hold firm: End the criminality, or no deal. The coup has to be stopped before it goes any further.

Politico reports that House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) is fretting that

Democrats’ insistence on adding conditions to stop Trump from withholding funding that Congress already appropriated could foil a final agreement.

“I think we've moved a long way on the numbers. We're very close. I would say essentially there,” Cole told reporters. “The real question is conditions on presidential action. And look, there's no way a Republican Senate and Republican House are going to limit what a Republican president can do.”

Well then, Democrats need to make clear to Cole, and to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-One Dakota Or The Other), that if they want to pass any budget bill, they’ll have to find a way to do it without Democrats’ help. And again, even if the House Rs manage, against all tendencies so far, to actually vote together, there’s still the Senate, where seven Democrats would need to vote for any CR.

Democrats must not allow a rubber-stamp endorsement of the coup. Even if it means a government shutdown. And when Republicans blame Democrats for not helping them out of the jam they created, Democrats can point to Trump’s crimes and say “Not on our watch. Stop the coup, and we’ll work with you. Not until then.”

Of course, there are still risks to a shutdown, especially if Trump declares Musk and his teenage mutant dingus zeroes to be “essential employees” so they can keep doing their deviltry during a shutdown. But again, at least Democrats would not be accessories, and such a move would only piss off Americans more. Maybe the courts would put the kibosh on it, if we still have courts.

On a related note: Today, Republicans are planning a House vote, not on a continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown, but instead on their “big beautiful bill” that would use the reconciliation process to extend the 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads and slash the budget for everything else except Defense and border security. Whether they’ll actually manage that is entirely open to question, because didn’t we mention that the Freedom Cockups want to slash Medicare and Medicaid, along with a bunch of other draconian cuts? That would likely guarantee the defeat of lots of Republicans in swing districts in 2026, assuming we still have elections then.

This one’s an entirely GOP jam: since reconciliation is a way to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, Democrats won’t be asked to help anyway. Thanks to the extreme budget cuts, the Washington Post reports (gift link), “between eight and 10 House Republicans who could face tight reelection campaigns have signaled they would reject [Speaker Mike] Johnson’s proposal, according to two lawmakers familiar with the talks, because of cuts to Medicaid,” so the reconciliation bill could implode on its own.

Interesting times, huh?

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[TPM / Politico / WaPo (gift link)]

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