Beginning on Sept. 30, the government will run out of (mostly) foreigners' money to spend on Americans. This means that rehearsals for "Shutdown Theater" are in full swing.
This revival of Shutdown Theater is going to be a doozy. It promises everything we've come to expect from the faux drama queens in the Democratic Party ("Oh, the Children! The Children!") with the extra added attraction of Orange Man Bad and his "usurpations of Constitutional Authority."
Although the cast members remain the same, the plot has gotten thicker with the addition of original scenes like "The Pocket Recission Prestidigitation." Observe as Trump will make $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending disappear before your eyes without any help from Congress!
Democrats will decry the infinitesimally small amount cut from the $7 trillion budget and cry crocodile tears for Trump's questionably constitutional action. Democrats only cry about the Constitution when Republicans violate it.
One of the show's subplots will be Republicans' effort to change the rules so they can confirm dozens of Trump appointees at once, including a slew of judges. At the rate Senate Democrats allow key administration officials to be confirmed, we'll be in the 22nd century before they can all take office.
However, the primary focus of the drama will be on the spending bills that must be passed before the end of the month. Otherwise, the government will begin to shut down, babies will cry for lack of milk, children will weep for no lunches, soldiers will cry for lack of bullets… well, maybe not that last bit. But you get the picture.
Now Democrats — eager to show the base that they’re taking the fight to the president — will almost certainly take the bait, making the prospects of a shutdown extremely high this fall.
The fighting posture will no doubt be welcomed by the party base, which has skewered congressional leaders for not taking a hard enough line against Trump. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in particular saw major blowback in March when he moved to pass a GOP funding bill at a time when most Democrats said the party should hold the line against Trump.
But the difficult reality for Democrats is that the same reasons Schumer gave for avoiding a shutdown back then also apply now: Typically the party that makes the demand that leads to a shutdown is the party that shoulders the public blame. More importantly, a shutdown could give Trump and his sharp-elbowed budget director, Russ Vought, even more authority to slash away at the federal bureaucracy.
“We would essentially be handing him even more power,” one Senate Democratic aide told me this week. “And who knows when they’ll reopen the government? They don’t even care about the government being open.”
Actually, Trump needs the government to be open, but probably only after Shutdown Theater has let the Democrats twist in the wind for a while. Trump knows the GOP has all the cards and won't hurry the process.
Democrats are demanding a "four-corners meeting" with the GOP and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to devise a plan to avoid Shutdown Theater. Speaker of the House Rep. Ron Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune are in no hurry. The House has passed only two of twelve spending bills, while the Senate has managed to pass only three. There will obviously be some sort of stopgap funding measure before the Sept. 30 deadline. The only question will be for how long.
There’s also the question of how Democrats would get out of such a scenario. As trash piles up in national parks and other government services are put on hold, Republicans will likely make Democrats vote over and over again to keep the government shuttered — all while the White House blames them for thousands of employees going without pay. Many Hill Republicans, meanwhile, would be glad to let the government stay closed.
One Democratic congressional aide framed the party's strategic problem perfectly:
“You’ll probably just have to eventually fold and get nothing out of it,” the aide said. He warned of a huge downside for the party without getting anything in return. “Are we going to let the base dictate legislative strategy and just shut down the government so we can say, ‘Okay, at least we fought,’ and then two weeks later, we reopen it and get nothing in return, and in the interim do harm to actual people?”
Also for our VIPs: 'The Sick Man of Europe' Is Now Most of the Continent
Democrats have trained their base of fanatics for years on how to attack Republicans while they were on the outside looking in. Now, Republicans own all three branches of government, and it's the Democrats with their nose pressed against the window of the bakery shop. The base wants war, while Democrats who have to engage in actual lawmaking realize they'd be on a suicide mission.
Shutdown Theater will probably have an extra-long run this year.
