Senate Dems: Don’t Be Complicit

Senate Democrats believe they are in a political bind, but that’s true only if they lack resolve and lose the narrative.

Photo: Mark Schiefelbein, AP

Senate Democrats have known this moment could come, so it’s disappointing that they somehow remain without a clear message or decisive path forward. They should have been messaging long ago precisely what they would do when asked to either go along with the GOP’s plans or to shut down the government.

But it seems they still don’t really know.

A bit of background as a quick refresher. The GOP House narrowly passed a continuing resolution, or CR, on Tuesday. The bill put the government on auto-pilot for another six months, more or less at existing budgetary levels. It kicked the can on finalizing the budget until sometime in September.

The fear is that the CR, with only top line numbers to work with, allows Trump and Musk to continue destroying the federal government from within by reallocating agency budgets without any input from Congress. It’s a serious abdication of Congress’s power of the purse.

Senate Dems have an opportunity to stop the CR with a filibuster. And they have already said that the Republicans do not have the votes to pass the CR in the Senate, meaning that Dems have the votes to prevent “cloture,” or the end of debate.

But if the Dems filibuster the CR, it will die and the government will shut down this weekend. And that has many Dems worried. They want a way out of this pickle.

The problem is, there isn’t an easy exit. The GOP made sure of that by refusing to consult Dems on the CR and by refusing to offer any compromise, even over how long the CR should run for. Then Republicans simply rammed the CR through, making this a binary choice: Allow our CR to pass or shut the government down.

Now, let’s be clear. This is a choice of two evils. Nobody in the party wants a shutdown, and many will work hard to avoid being blamed for it. But remember the first rule when fighting fascism: Never comply in advance. That’s what allowing a vote on the CR would amount to, all because a handful of Senate Dems are worried about their reelection prospects should the party get blamed for the shutdown.

I want to walk through the arguments against a shutdown and answer them before coming back to this core principle. In times like this, we need moral clarity, not political cover. And make no mistake: If Democratic senators allow the vote to proceed, they will do so in the most cynical and performative of ways, one that Robert Hubbell rightfully has dubbed political “kabuki theater.”

I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, let’s talk about some legitimate shutdown concerns.

Reasons not to shut down the government

I’m going to lean heavily here on the work of Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who has put a great deal of thought into the dilemma a shutdown presents and has spoken to many folks on the Hill about their worries. The concerns about a government shutdown can be roughly summarized as follows:

• Democrats will get blamed for it.

• The White House will get to control the pace, and the press will be in the dark.

• Trump’s presidency and the economy are imploding, so why interrupt that now?

• It’s too soon; by the fall we’ll be in or near recession. Have the fight then, which will be over bigger things like Medicaid.

• Trump and Musk actually want a shutdown. And after one goes on for 30 days, there are legal avenues for layoffs, so a shutdown is a trap.

These are all decent arguments, and they might have carried the day if this were a normal White House and normal times.

On the question of who will be blamed, this represents a failure of imagination and an adoption of GOP framing. It’s not a question of who shut the government down initially so much as who keeps it shut down. Nobody is going to care in a few months if the shutdown is short. And if it’s long, it’s because the Republicans want it that way. They could reopen the government at any moment if they would either pass a budget (which they have the numbers to do) or pass a compromise CR that is far shorter, as the Democrats have reasonably demanded.

As for the White House controlling the pace of the shutdown, it’s already clear that administration is doing whatever it wants: impounding funds, slashing the workforce and shutting down agencies even while the government is open. We all see it, and so will the average voter.

While it’s wise not to interrupt an opponent when they’re self-imploding, Democrats won’t make themselves the story during a shutdown unless they let Republicans control the narrative. Otherwise a shutdown that continues while the GOP controls all branches of government is still on them.

As for acting too soon, the real danger is acting too late. If Dems go along with the CR, they allow a slow bleed to continue, and they won’t have a chance to take another hard stand until six months from now. That’s an abdication of their duty to stand against fascism now.

The dangers of allowing Trump and Musk to act while the rest of the government is shut down is probably the best argument against a shutdown, and certainly one unique to these times. On this, Marshall makes a strong argument:

Musk is slicing through the federal bureaucracy like butter. It’s not at all clear to me how a shutdown makes his job any easier. He may get additional legal avenues after 30 days, but right now he’s carving his own roads through the federal bureaucracy. Nothing is holding him back. Just today, I heard about another major department of government that is about to shutter regional offices in blue states across the country. It seems absurd to imagine that laying low and providing a fully funded license for Musk to keep cutting for the next six months is a more destructive outcome than drawing a line in the sand now. Really, how exactly could he be any less restrained than removing all restraints from him in advance? How is that possible? As I said, it’s like planning your escape from Treblinka and you decide it’s too risky because they’ll kill you if you get caught.

Reasons to block the CR

When you have the chance to use your power to stop the fascists, you shouldn’t hesitate. Hesitation signals that you are just a paper tiger. And really, you would be one if you caved out of a worry of what might happen instead of focusing on what is already happening.

If Democrats are worried about being blamed for shutting down the government, then they should be really worried about the downside of allowing the CR through. Democratic voters are losing faith in their elected representatives. Democrats in Congress are already perceived as not doing all they can to stop the Republicans. And the filibuster is one of the last true and effective backstops Dems possess. If Senate Democrats allow a vote on the CR through, even when they had it fully within their power to block it, they will confirm to everyone that they are weak and cowardly in the face of the fascist GOP threat. They will signal that they are ready to roll over at the slightest risk to their re-election prospects. And they will be complicit in what happens next.

It’s actually worse than this. There are credible reports that Democrats under Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are considering allowing the CR vote to happen, provided they get to hold a performative vote on an amendment to limit the CR to just 30 days.

What does this mean? In plain terms, Democrats know that any amendment offered to the CR will fail, and then the CR will pass. All they will gain from allowing the bill to come to the floor is a bit of political cover for their vote. They hope to claim they voted against the CR when they actually let it sail through.

This is, in a word, bullshit. When I wrote earlier this week that a handful of Democratic senators might grudgingly vote to keep the government open, I didn’t understand that they would do so while claiming publicly to want the opposite. Either you oppose the CR and block it with a filibuster, or you admit that you want to avoid a shutdown at all costs and the GOP has forced your hand with this CR. We may not like Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) decision to vote to keep the government from shutting down, but at least he is telling us the real reason he is voting that way.

Voters are on to this insulting and cynical plan, and I hope that the Senate Dems understand that. It’s a craven, milk toast response worthy of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): all concern and no action.

Democrats in the House are urging their counterparts in the Senate to stand with them to oppose the CR. And by that they mean to fully oppose it. That includes filibustering it when given the opportunity. Some Senate Democrats are putting out statements that they will vote against the CR, but really that’s not enough. They need to state unequivocally that they will not even allow the CR to come to a vote by supporting the filibuster.

If you call your senator today, and I strongly suggest you do, please make that point clear. The Capitol Hill switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

Dr. Evil and the hospital patient

Perhaps a hypothetical will make the moral case for voting against the CR clearer for any on the fence.

Imagine the federal government is a hospital patient, now on life support because Dr. Evil has been drawing too much blood every day.

The hospital director comes to you and demands that you authorize him to keep the lights on. You understandably balk. Dr. Evil keeps drawing blood from the patient and you want the director to do something to make him stop. If you give your authorization, which is the last card you have to play, within six months the patient will be dead from the blood drawing.

Instead, to your horror, the director threatens to lock the hospital doors with Dr. Evil inside unless you sign off with your authorization. Six more months with Dr. Evil, and you need to agree to it! Now!!

Would you go along with this madness? Or would you tell the director to go screw himself, that you won’t do it, and that you’ll authorize him to keep the lights on only if he reins in Dr. Evil?

Senators swear an oath to obey and protect the Constitution. What Trump and Musk are doing is unconstitutional. The GOP’s CR would give them six more months of runway to do it. Democrats who swore this oath cannot make themselves complicit in allowing unconstitutional activity to continue under their watch, even if that means shutting down where it’s happening.

And remember, the Republicans can reopen the government at any time, simply by agreeing to finalize a budget in, say, 30 days. The story, if properly and consistently messaged, will become about the GOP’s refusal to turn the lights back on and actually stop Dr. Evil. After all, they’re the ones in charge. Everything bad that happens from the shutdown on will be on them because they can end the shutdown at any time.

We need leadership with moral clarity, decisiveness, and the political spine to do the hard things in the name of preserving our democracy. What we don’t need are head fakes, cynical acts of political self-preservation, and complicity in this horrorshow.