Is it time for another government shutdown?
And which party will the people blame if it comes to pass?
This time the usual roles are reversed, and in addition the Republicans say firings will ensue:
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., released a memo earlier this week highlighting past years’ comments by Senate Democrats warning of the pitfalls of a government shutdown.
“House Republicans acted responsibly last week to keep the government open with the clean short-term continuing resolution,” Johnson’s memo said.
“Senate Democrats, who used to warn that shutdowns would hurt seniors, veterans, and working families, are now threatening to force one unless Congress repeals the Working Families Tax Cut, restores taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens, and sends half a billion dollars to leftist news outlets, among other partisan spending demands.”
Democrats claim to be protecting healthcare – but there’s also the issue of government jobs:
“[A]gencies are directed to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities” that are funded by annual appropriations but are not “consistent with the president’s priorities,” Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a memo to senior administration officials.
The move raised the stakes of a shutdown for Democratic lawmakers, many of whom are advocates for the federal workforce.
Who will blink first? And who will be blamed? To anyone who’s been paying attention to shutdowns for the past umpteen years, it would be hard for Democrats to claim that a shutdown would be good and not bad. But reversals of that kind are certainly not unusual.
Here’s a recent poll by Rasmussen on the subject:
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 38% of Likely U.S. voters say that if there is a government shutdown, Democrats in Congress will be most to blame, while 29% think congressional Republicans would deserve the blame and 21% believe most of the blame would belong to President Donald Trump. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure.
If you add the “Trump” number to the “Rebublicans” figure, you get 50%. Not sure what a poll like that means, if anything. But I would wager that most people aren’t following this and don’t even know what it’s about.
Dems will cave as it is established that there will be yuuge firings of government employees with the shutdown, which is one of their special interest groups. I am going to guess there are frantic calls going on right now to dems to pass the clean extension from the House, take the hit and move on.
Republicans have nothing to gain by caving (RINOs excepted).
“And which party will the people blame if it comes to pass?”
Republicans will blame dems. dems and MSM will blame Trump
Looks like Trump is playing Hard Ball, or 3D Chess. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall in Schumer’s office? Polisi might have a stroke.
Neo: “But I would wager that most people aren’t following this and don’t even know what it’s about.”
Part of what it is about is that “our” Congress has failed to conduct the People’s Business in passing the established 12 appropriations bills. We supposedly have the capability to eventually fire them for mal-performance, but I almost never hear of someone being kicked out of office because they were not active enough in pushing for completing this business on time.
And we probably can’t even incentivize them by docking their salaries for failure to perform. Most are too wealthy or financially independent to care about their paltry $174K+ salary. Some probably would be supported by friends and family or PACs if their Congressional income was curtailed for a time.
And clearly once a given appropriation is in the bag, it can (typically) no longer be used as a trade-off for something someone else wants.
Seems like the GOP is making the Dems squirm and squeal. I like it!
TAKE NOTE
It is being reported that, in an extraordinary, apparently first of it’s kind, unprecedented move, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, has ordered every single General grade officer in every branch of our entire military–reportedly 800 Generals and Admirals, plus their senior enlisted advisors–to travel from their commands, from all over the world, to report, in person, to Quantico for a meeting next week—no agenda as yet specified.*
My bet is that Hegseth will lay down the law, and that a lot of General officers and their senior enlisted advisors, who have been responsible for a lot of non or malicious compliance, will be sacked.
* See https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/09/25/panic-seizes-pentagon-as-hegseth-calls-no-notice-no-agenda-meeting-of-all-generals-in-command-billets-n2194381
In past shut-downs, Biden and Obama have gone out of their way to make things easy on the bureaucrats (the “non-essential” ones still got a paid vacation–think about that) and tough on the taxpayer (they were barred from walking on the mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol building–and of course, national parks were closed). It looks like Trump will switch things up and make it tough to be a bureaucrat and inconvenience as few taxpayers as possible. As long as Social Security and Medicare checks keep coming, the courts stay open, the police stay on the job, and the national parks stay open, people won’t shed a lot of tears over State Department, HUD, DOT and HHS bureaucrats losing income or (even better) their jobs.
Of what use are polls anymore? There is only one that matters and we just had it eleven months ago. Good sample size, too. About 160 million people, 77 million of whom voted for Trump.
I grant you, there are things he’s done that not all 77 million signed on for, but I think the number who will turn on him over a government shutdown is low. All the parasites who wallow at the government trough voted for Kamala. Naturally, they’ll blame the Republicans, who want the trough to be even less crowded.
The left’s construction of the showdown is utterly dishonest. They’re demanding Medicare for illegals be restored (Trump won on arresting illegal immigration) and funding for public media be restored (conservatives have clamored for funding to end for decades). Meanwhile, the Republicans just said let’s continue to fund the government as is, with no additions or subtractions.
The Democrats, by demanding more spending, have surrendered any claim to being deficit hawks, but are hoping people will forget that we’re 38 trillion in debt, until Trump wants to spend money on anything, at which point, they’ll be “clown nose off” and clutch their pearls about money again.
We can’t talk about the mask slipping with Democrats anymore. The mask has been off for years. We see who they are now, and the old rules (and polls, for that matter) no longer apply.
It now appears that the FBI actually had 274 agents of various sorts embedded in the Jan. 6th crowd that day.*
* See https://www.theblaze.com/news/fbi-had-275-plainclothes-agents-embedded-in-jan-6-crowds-congressional-source-says
I found this piece more detailed and informative than most of the [more generalized] news accounts.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/09/25/the_obamacare_sweeteners_poisoning_budget_negotiations_1136972.html
It appears that Schumer et al. are arguing that Obama- and Biden- and Covid-specific spending legislation should be rendered more-or-less permanent. Thus undoing the “roll back” of those programs done by the Repubs in their effort to somewhat reduce federal spending commitments.
Recall Pres. Reagan’s quip about the “eternal life” of government programs. The Trump team seems to be really trying to do something about our out of control federal spending, and the Dems are either unwilling to compromise or are trying to use the Trumpy negotiation tactic of asking for the impossible while silently willing to settle for somewhat less. I guess we’ll see. It seems quite brilliant of Trump to put fed employees on the line as the major cost of the Schumer strategy, whatever it may be…..
“Cool story, General.” Pete Hegeth replied to Ben Hodges, who’d Xposted “July 1935 German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weimar constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions.”
https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1971532130712002775
https://x.com/general_ben/status/1971508877394063576
@Colocomment:It appears that Schumer et al. are arguing that Obama- and Biden- and Covid-specific spending legislation should be rendered more-or-less permanent. Thus undoing the “roll back” of those programs done by the Repubs in their effort to somewhat reduce federal spending commitments.
In my day job, I attended a panel discussion not long ago where it came up that the sunsetting of the Obamacare subsidies can be used as leverage for some other flavors of health care reform. Some of the people in that discussion were Trump administration and Republican Senate staffers–no one from the D side was represented–so one more reason I think a compromise is in the offing that may get deliver some small amount of good at least on paper, but at the same time will allow the hogs to continue to feed at the trough.
The tell will be one side gets to talk-talk about how they owned the libs, but the checks will keep going out the door to the people the Dems (and too many of the GOP) want them to go to.
We had all that fuss and feathers about DOGE, in the end infinitesimal cuts were made, and now we are, I’m afraid, in the process of undoing those cuts in exchange for talk-talk.
Incidentallly, the Dems could not be engaging in even the pretence of a shutdown without the assistant of some Senate Republicans.
Clicking through to neo’s Link, found this nugget down in the bottom:
Oh, really. Mysteriously not named. But if you click on a link in that article you find Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowksi voting with the D’s, and Fetterman voting with the R’s, so it failed 48-44.
48+44 = 92. Why are 8 missing, who are they? Look at the vote on the Senate.gov page. Eight Republican Senators didn’t even vote. This is theater. Had they voted this would have passed!
If it was really important, if the GOP leadership actually meant it, they would never let it fail with less than 51 voting against and all Republican Senators having to vote. Votes are negotiated, that is the function of the Whips.
One more time we’re getting rolled by narrative because we believe the story and don’t click through to the facts.
Too bad General Hodges is retired and Hegseth can’t fire his a$$!
According to the commentary linked below, this extraordinary meeting of all General officers and Admirals, called by Secretary of War Hegseth, is likely to deal with the enormous increase in the number of General officers we have today vs. the size of our military force.
Col. Douglas Macgregor points out that during WWII, when our military forces had expanded to 12 million or so, we had only seven four star generals, but that today, when our entire military force consists of only a little more than a million men, we now have 40 or so four star generals.*
Macgregor also thought that it was possible that the issue of the large percentage of women in our armed forces–15 or 20%–and the wish to reduce that percentage to around 5%–might be a topic, as might Affirmative Action promotions.
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gu45MLyh48
P.S. My impression is that today, since President Trump appeared on the political scene, there have been an increasing number of Generals and other officers who have publicly indicated their open disdain for him and for his policies (I can only imagine what they have been saying to their friends, in private, and at the O club).
Mitchell Strand (9:53 am) writes,”The Democrats, by demanding more spending, have surrendered any claim to being deficit hawks, . . . .” That’s this week. Next week, the loyalists and the amnesia-addled will be buying into their deficit hawk performance art anew, with nary a hint of looking back.
As Mitchell Strand continues, they (the Democrats) will be confident in their ability to fool enough of the people enough of the time, figuring correctly that enough “people will forget that we’re 38 trillion in debt, until Trump wants to spend money on anything, at which point, they’ll be ‘clown nose off’ and clutch their pearls about money again.”
Niketas:
I see you’re beating that “8 missing Republicans” horse again. We discussed that previously (don’t have time to find the thread now), and it concerns whether or not to use the nuclear option. Now, that’s an issue – whether to activate that option or not – that could be debated (and has been). But short of the nuclear option, those 8 missing senators are irrelevant, and that’s why they were missing.