Democrats nationally are deeply divided on the government shutdown to nowhere, and it is only a matter of time before they break.
But even if they don’t, the costs of the shutdown will only mount in unexpected ways, all to accomplish what might have been better attempted had Democrats won one or both majorities in the House and Senate in 2026 — and then would actually be in a better position to negotiate.
Are government shutdowns popular? Maybe they are, but Democrats better hope not when they’re in the majority. If they’re a good thing and politically expedient, then Republicans will try them more often, too, even when their only leverage is the Senate filibuster.
But, by that time, say 2029 or 2033, maybe Democrats when they have a trifecta again — Democrats usually win the trifecta of the House, Senate and White House when they win the Electoral College — will just abolish the filibuster so they can completely federalize elections, pack the Supreme Court, make more states to pack the Senate, impose the Green New Deal and then they’ll have a “proper” socialist republic, just like they tried in 2022. Who knows?
Until the next elections. And then they’ll wish they had never breached the delicate norms that have governed Congress for decades.
Or maybe, if the government shutdown goes on long enough now, in 2025, it will be Trump and Republicans who first break the “sacred” seal and start passing appropriations bills on simple majorities — and just dismantle the federal leviathan right now.
President Trump is already threatening “irreversible” reductions in force of the federal workers. He can get there with executive actions during the lapse in funding, but Congress could just pour cement on it with partisan appropriations bills. Right now. Decades to build but toppled in moments. Is that what Democrats really want?
The appropriations process in 2025 is a direct consequence of the elections of 2024 wherein the American people’s will was that Republicans would have House and Senate majorities and President Donald Trump would be reelected, which temporarily limits the role of the opposition party. The American people are expecting Republicans to govern.
In 2021, the roles were reversed and Republicans were similarly situated, Democrats had both chambers of Congress and the White House with former President Joe Biden, and ran the table on bills like the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, and otherwise appropriations were similarly governed by continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills.
Republicans mounted principled opposition during the Biden years, even while they and their constituents were being surveilled and censored, their party leaders were being unjustly prosecuted and Biden was inciting the American people against them, but their leaders did not take them into battles that could not be won.
There’s not much you can do against the trifecta except take a stand, voice your opposition and do better in the next elections. Democrats don’t have the votes. They can’t get to 51, let alone 60 in the Senate to do what they’re asking — which frankly is absurd right after the 2024 election was won and lost on illegal immigration among other issues.
Democrats are proposing another $349.8 billion to make permanent the expanded premium tax credit under the 2021 American Rescue Plan and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that substantially increased Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies, $40.3 billion to repeal a 2025 Department of Health and Human Services regulation that removes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from ACA marketplaces and $271.8 billion to repeal sections of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cut waste, fraud and abuse from Obamacare, specifically, repealing sections 71301, 71302, 71303, 71304, and 71305 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which explicitly bar illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded health care, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
President Trump ran on deporting illegal immigrants and would never sign such a bill creating not merely incentives, but benefits for those who violated our borders to remain in this country. It’s nuts.
And then Democrats claim they’re not shutting down the government over the very grievances they just put forth — just read their bill! — their opening bid in this fool’s errand that won’t accomplish anything other than proving that Democrats simply don’t have the votes to enact their plan, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have the votes to overcome a presidential veto.
Democrats can’t get to 218 and they can’t get to 51 or 60, and most importantly, and they can’t get across President Trump’s desk. That’s all that matters.
Those are the thresholds that are required to command policy and law in this country. You can only do so much with 41 Senators led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) — the man who tried to abolish the filibuster. They are blocking a bill that’s bound to pass at the end of the day. It’s just a question of how long the posturing will go on.
These are the kinds of differences that generally can only be overcome with elections, which will not be for another year in Congress and not for another three years for the presidency. That is, if normal order is going to be maintained. Democrats tried to abolish the constitutionally unnecessary filibuster in 2022, and now they wield it as if it was sacred.
But the longer the shutdown goes on, the more likely it is that the equation might ultimately change. Democrats are tempting fate. And the outcome might not be what they expect.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
