Democrats should force a shutdown to save the government

Jackie Calmes, Tribune News Service

Democrats have to change their ways. Ideally yesterday. The Democratic Party is the pro-government party, simply speaking, and Republicans the antigovernment party. Democrats want to make the government work for people. Trump-era Republicans might as well wear knock-offs of Melania Trump’s old “I really don’t care. Do U?” jacket. For three decades, as actual and threatened government shutdowns have become routine for Washington funding fights, it’s generally been Republicans who’ve provoked them. For Democrats, shutting down the government goes completely against their brand, against their very DNA.

But what are Democrats to do when the federal government is wholly run by Republicans — in Congress, the executive branch and even the Supreme Court — acting in thrall to a president who in eight months has transformed that government into a plaything for his whims, compulsion for chaos, personal enrichment and political retribution? What to do when the government has stripped states, cities, universities and federal programs of funding Congress appropriated by law for teaching grants, healthcare, scientific research and so much more, and fired hundreds of thousands of public employees without cause, including federal prosecutors, military lawyers and inspectors general who might blow the whistle on administration lawlessness?

What to do when the government sends masked federal agents to seize people, without warrants, and disappear them into unmarked cars (with at least the temporary, precedent-breaking blessing this week of the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority)? Do Democrats in Congress vote to keep that government running? That’s the question they face this month as government funding expires with the fiscal year on Sept. 30: Do enough Democrats give Republicans the votes they need in the Senate to keep the Trump train running on Oct. 1 and beyond?

Despite all that is wrong with that track, the answer to whether to keep going isn’t a simple “Hell, no.” Shutting down the government hurts Americans who work for it, who receive benefits or need information from it, who visit national parks and veterans’ hospitals — people Democrats seek to help. A shutdown further empowers the president, who gets to decide what’s essential and can stay open. A shutdown hurts the economy in the short term. And as Republicans of the past can attest, a shutdown usually exacts a political price for the party that’s blamed for it.

For all those reasons, when Congress last had to vote to fund the government in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York led a small group of fellow Democratic senators in acquiescing to Republicans’ package. Democrats in the House and the party’s voter base erupted in fury. Morale tanked among Democrats spoiling for a fight, and with it the party’s standing in polls. All but one House Democrat opposed the March funding bill, but the Republican majority narrowly passed it. Under Senate rules, however, the slim Republican majority couldn’t go it alone; they needed a few Democratic votes to reach a 60-vote supermajority and avoid a filibuster. It’s practically the only leverage Democrats have in Donald Trump’s Washington. In March they didn’t use it.

This time should be different.

I say that as someone who reluctantly supported Schumer’s decision six months ago, even as I and many others were infuriated by his ham-handed execution: his party’s lack of a message against the earlier spending bill, Schumer’s mixed signals and then his eleventh-hour surrender. It was because of Democrats’ message-less morass that I supported his action: because Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hadn’t made the Democrats’ case ahead of time so that the party could win a shutdown showdown with Republicans in the court of public opinion.

It might already be too late, with less than three weeks before a new fiscal year, but the Senate and House Democrats must prepare their ground and take a stand. It’s a bad sign that they’re only now huddling, that they weren’t ready with a message and strategy when Congress finally returned after Labor Day from its August recess or, better yet, before Congress left.

But here we are, and now the Democrats should do two things:

First, they must demand that Republicans finally negotiate with them. Outline concise conditions for getting any Democrat’s vote on a government funding bill, whether it’s a stopgap measure to buy more bargaining time or a longer-term bill. Show Americans what Democrats are for, not just that they’re against President Trump. Harp daily on the Democratic demands — say, restoration of healthcare money that was slashed to pay for Republicans’ tax cuts; extension of expiring Obamacare tax credits for lower- and middle-income workers; less money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and more for local police. And elevate new, younger Democrats to spread the word — like first-term Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who tweeted on Monday, as party leaders were still noodling: “If the President wants my vote, he has to negotiate. One place to start is to walk back cuts to health care.”

Second, when Trump and the Republicans inevitably don’t compromise — the president has never met with the Democratic leaders since he took office, and his pre-recess message to Schumer in a social media post was “GO TO HELL” — then Democrats should vote no on funding the government. And hold their ground during a shutdown, even as pressure builds when federal offices close and services lapse.