Last week, the federal government shut down after Congress failed to pass a spending bill to continue operations even in the short term. While we haven’t had a shutdown since the last Trump presidency (2019), this isn’t entirely new territory. Near-shutdowns and short shutdowns have become almost commonplace as the appropriations process has become increasingly unwieldy and unmanageable. But this shutdown does feel different, and it’s worth digging into why.
Republicans are trying to pass a continuing resolution, which would continue funding the government at the same level as last fiscal year for a little more than a month. Democrats have a short list of healthcare-related demands, particularly the extension of some subsidies for the Affordable Care Act healthcare premiums that are set to expire. If they do expire, monthly costs for healthcare plans would go up by hundreds of dollars.
In other circumstances, this could be the start of a pretty normal negotiation process. Democrats have identified a key priority that is the cost of their votes, and the Republicans, as the majority party in control of both chambers of Congress, have to decide what price they are willing to pay for the needed votes. Democrats have been clear about their demands since at least August.
But nothing this year has been normal, which is impacting the stakes of this fight.
The Trump Administration started off by passing a spending bill for the last fiscal year that was heavily partisan, drafted entirely without Democratic participation. In March, with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency taking an axe to federal agencies and a debt ceiling fiscal cliff looming, Senate Democrats provided just enough votes to allow for the bill to meet the 60-vote threshold to come to the floor, but only two voted for the underlying legislation. This is the bill that Democrats are being asked to extend – one that reflects none of their priorities and that only two voted for in the first place.
In addition, ever since taking office, the Trump Administration has been conducting an all-out assault on Congress’s power of the purse, and Congressional Republicans have shown no inclination to push back. Not only has Trump been aggressive in proposing his own radical spending priorities (his proposed budget would cut the State Department by nearly 84%, Health and Human Services by 26%, and the Environmental Protection Agency by more than 50%), but the administration has also been aggressive in claiming unprecedented additional authority to dictate spending.
Most notably, the administration successfully pushed a $9 billion rescission – essentially a retroactive budget cut – of development assistance and public broadcasting earlier this summer. Unlike regular spending bills, rescissions do not need 60 votes in the Senate, which means that any deal Democrats cut in a new spending bill could simply be undone on a purely partisan basis later. The administration didn’t stop there, though; they also put forward a ‘pocket rescission’ in which they initiated a rescission so close to the expiration of the funding in question that it took effect even without Congress’s approval.
The Trump administration has also apparently been impounding funds, essentially refusing to spend money that Congress instructed them to spend. Impoundments are more difficult to track, but the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found at least seven instances of impoundments. Most recently, they reported on the government refusing to spend disaster assistance money from FEMA. Democrats in the appropriations committee have been tracking a much more extensive list of programs that they believe are frozen, cancelled, or being challenged in court. Some of these programs might not be formal impoundments yet, but the list includes 118 programs totaling over $425 billion, which Congress funded and the administration is balking or stalling at implementing. This is an absolutely unprecedented challenge to Congress’ constitutional power of the purse.
This kind of assault on constitutional separation of powers, especially given Congressional Republicans’ refusal to respond, puts Congressional Democrats in a difficult place. They have limited power in Congress as the minority in both houses, though for any measure that requires 60 votes in the Senate, they do have some leverage. For Democrats to simply acquiesce to the Republican spending bill would be giving up one of their very few opportunities to use their limited power to try to oppose not only a spending bill that includes none of their priorities, but indeed the Trump administration’s unprecedented challenge to our fundamental system of representative democracy.
The Democrats are clearly aware of this dynamic, which is why their counter-proposal included language to limit rescissions and counter Trump’s pocket rescission, in addition to their baseline focus on healthcare spending, as a key issue that will directly affect the well-being of millions of people.
Republicans, though, do not seem to be acting as if the Democrats are a legitimate seat of power in Congress. Democrats have been clear on their demands and asking for meetings with Trump and Congressional Republicans since August, but no formal negotiations between the parties took place until about 36 hours before the shutdown. Shortly after the meeting, the President posted an openly racist and authoritarian deepfake AI video with fabricated audio from Senator Chuck Schumer and an animated sombrero on Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies.
A good-faith outcome is impossible in any negotiation if one side does not recognize the legitimate right of the other side to be at the table at all. With Republicans refusing to negotiate and Democrats increasingly concerned about the implications for democracy if they cave, the way out of the shutdown is extremely unclear at the moment.
Shutdowns are painful. Millions of workers go without paychecks, and important public services are frozen or delayed. True to its authoritarian tendencies – in which consolidating power is the priority, and serving the people is secondary at best – the Trump Administration is using the shutdown as an excuse to threaten to conduct more mass layoffs of civil servants, despite already deep cuts earlier this year, and punish Democratic states by withholding federal grants.
Regardless of the merits of Democrats’ basic demands on healthcare spending, the stakes of this fight are actually much higher and go directly to how the Constitution created essential checks and balances precisely to avoid a descent into authoritarianism. The separation of powers, and specifically Congressional authority on government spending, is a bedrock principle and a key part of those checks and balances. The Trump administration is quite openly trying to remove all checks to their power, and members of Congress – regardless of party – should be fully aware of the terrifying implications of this and push back with every tool they have.
