Now shutdowns are good, because the Democrats are doing them.
It seems as though a shutdown will probably happen tonight at midnight. Hard to get too excited about it at this point, but see this as well as this.
Comments
Democrats flip the script on shutdowns — 30 Comments
It ought to be interesting to see how Trump treats a shut-down. Two things that would excite me: (1) no back pay for bureaucrats when the shutdown ends–make them want to start getting paid again and (2) reverse the “Washington Monument” strategy–keep parks and things that normal people use open and shut down the federal spending machine that redistributes money from the productive to the unproductive.
I’m curious about Trump’s layoff threats:
________________________________
Shutdown fight casts a shadow over jobs as Trump prepares for largest federal resignation in US history
The shutdown isn’t just about budgets — it’s also about jobs, and possibly careers amid a weakening labor market
Some reports say Trump will use the shutdown to permanently lay off employees in programs he doesn’t support. This is in addition to the 100,000 or so who took the buyout offer and are leaving federal service today.
I’m reading that the Deep State bureaucrats — er, federal employees — who took Trump’s early retirement packages are having a tough time finding new jobs.
Quelle surprise.
It’s going to be worse for those who just get axed without a nice package and come in even later to look for work.
Cue the world’s smallest violin.
From Steve Hayward’s Substack, about the projected shutdown:
I believe Republicans, for a change, hold the high cards this time, though the media will try to blame Republicans anyway, which will distract them from blaming the Jews for about 15 minutes.
I was fired and downsized (called it that, but I was fired)numerous times. It took time and hard work to find another job, but I did. No one cried for me when I was fired. OK, it was a mixed bag – sometime my fault entirely, sometimes not.
I wonder if the department heads were told many months ago to identify those people and programs that can be shut down. I hope they are prepared.
It is said that Trump will be able to do things irreversibly.
It’s really important to click through on these and look up the actual votes if necessary.
The vote that happened just now was on the Dem’s proposed budget changes, and the Republicans voted not to pass it 53-47. And that’s fine.
Some Senate Republicans want to somehow get paid off before a budget gets passed. I’m not in the smoke-filled rooms so I don’t know who or what they are holding out for, but I can count to 51.
@Sennacherib:It is said that Trump will be able to do things irreversibly.
I think this is only true in the sense that people who get fired don’t come back to work when the budget is passed. They’re not being furloughed.
According to Google AI:
____________________________
As of October 1, 2025, the U.S. Congress is facing a critical budget showdown with the government funding deadline having just passed on September 30.
The Republican-controlled House has passed a stopgap continuing resolution containing significant cuts to healthcare programs, which is now under consideration in the Senate.
This places Senate Democrats in a difficult position: they must either accept a measure they strongly oppose or risk a government shutdown.
____________________________
It seems Republicans have the whip hand here. Trump’s threats are serious.
The Republican cuts to healthcare are unspecified but I believe they are the Democrat demands to provide healthcare to illegals.
Huxley “The Republican cuts to healthcare are unspecified but I believe they are the Democrat demands to provide healthcare to illegals.”
I heard today the healthcare changes which Dems are demanding are to extend the subsidies to Medicaid & to Obamacare that Biden implemented. Covid subsidies actually. Which allowed many able-bodied people to get medicaid — with no work requirements — and expanded subsidies for Obamacare to families making over half a million dollars, in some states.
Dems want all that to continue forever, of course. Covid was just an opportunity to get it embedded.
The free healthcare for illegals is just a cherry on top.
Niketas Choniates on September 30, 2025 at 7:35 pm said:
“I think this is only true in the sense that people who get fired don’t come back to work when the budget is passed. ”
While most of us tend to favor a net reduction in the size of the bureaucracy, this struck me as a good rationale to tell both the Dems and Republican senators that we can’t hire these people back until you finish confirming the politically nominated managers to manage them. “Do your job! so the (still remaining) bureaucrats can do theirs!”
Niketas Choniates:
Some Senate Republicans want to somehow get paid off before a budget gets passed. I’m not in the smoke-filled rooms so I don’t know who or what they are holding out for, but I can count to 51.
———————————
Interesting.
So Trump is playing chicken not just with the Dems, but with the squishy Congressional RINOs. Either that, or they are finally on board with the MAGA administration, and are working to precipitate the shutdown.
The shutdown allows sweeping cuts with virtually no risk of lawfare entanglements… maybe the Republican idiots in Congress finally understand that they will be running in the next election based on their MAGA bona fides.
I have noticed that the Democrats come up with numbers which are never challenged.
From the “Quelle Surprise!” File:
So you were wondering about Chicago’s version of Sunny Cal’s High-Speed train boondoggle MEGA-GRIFT?
the thing is personnel jedi russ vouight can determine who gets fired and who doesn’t right, yes the details are what are in the reopening package,
Niketas Choniates–
The Republicans submitted what is called a “clean CR.” That means they took the existing Continuing Resolution and changed nothing on it but the expiration date. That existing Continuing Resolution was voted on and passed during the Biden Administration. It was renewed earlier this year when Charles Schumer relented to the White House, i.e., he opted to avoid a shutdown, incurring the wrath of elements of the Democrat Party.
The existing Continuing Resolution, therefore, is (or was) funding the government at levels approved by Democrats when Biden was President. The Big Beautiful Bill did include cuts, but remember, they were so peripheral Elon Musk split from the President in frustration. Additional cuts were made via rescission. But beyond that, nothing was changed but the date.
It is the Democrats’ demands holding up funding the government. They want health care for their clients, illegal aliens, paid for by U.S. citizens. They also want a return of funding for public media. The Democrats are a minority party pretending to represent the majority of the American people.
So, yes, the Republicans could end the shutdown, but it’s not their fault we are where we are. Truthfully, the Democrats’ demands amount to a poison pill. They knew the Republicans wouldn’t agree, forcing the shutdown. The Democrats are hoping to inflict a public relations hit on the President, betting that he won’t damage their other client base, the entrenched federal bureaucracy. I think they have miscalculated.
Top of the sheet: majority required for vote 3/5ths.
3/5ths of 100 is? . . . . . 60.
Is 44 + 8, 60? Nope. It’s 52.
So yes, that rule would require a rule change. A rule change — I take it — by simple majority 51.
Precedent? History of same? Calculations of effect of such a change to future procedures as boons or harms? I don’t know.
Still, this is a necessary if potentially practical step assumed, yet here unmentioned. Why, why not? Again, I don’t know. But thems the numbers as they appear today.
@sdferr:Precedent? History of same?
They just did it on September 12. Neo posted on it. They set aside the filibuster whenever they want to.
@Mitchell Strand:The Republicans submitted what is called a “clean CR.” So, yes, the Republicans could end the shutdown, but it’s not their fault we are where we are.
I don’t understand what “fault” has to do with anything. On September 25th they could have passed the clean CR the House submitted but 8 Republicans in the Senate abstained, so it was defeated 48-44. If they had voted for it instead of abstaining, that clean CR would be the budget now. And there’s an end on it.
The GOP Senate leadership did not actually want the clean CR or they never would allow those abstentions, they would have whipped a majority vote. It’s not like those 8 Republicans were home with the flu.
I have to admit I really like the trolling Trump is doing on the Democrats: the video with Jeffries and Schumer, the pic of the 2028 hat in the Oval Office, The Ds hate being made fun of, and we need more of that. Best weapon against their constant “Nazi!” “Hitler!”, and “facist!” is to just make fun of them and laugh at them. Really gets under their skin.
Context counts, still. This isn’t a question of sheparding through Presidential nominees is it? It’s a bit more consequential (and I may presume in charity pleads for a modicum of bipartisan concurrence, either on traditional or practical grounds as they choose). I’m willing to hear their arguments either for or against a rule change in this circumstance, but I don’t hear those either way issuing from the political actors themselves. Do you?
I’m also aware you like to charge It’s merely “theater”. Fine. Be aware from my point of view that “theater” originated in sacred acts undertaken on the slopes of the Acropolis.
@sdferr:I don’t hear those either way issuing from the political actors themselves. Do you?
Why would we expect politicians to explain directly–or even honestly–what their goals, methods, and intentions are? We have to deduce them from their actions.
Be aware from my point of view that “theater” originated in sacred acts undertaken on the slopes of the Acropolis.
Not really sure what “sacred” has to do with Congressional pork-barreling and double-dealing.
So much the worse for you my friend.
@Niketas
Here’s what I should have said to start with…
At this point, I don’t even care. The Republicans have finally stood up on their hind legs instead of caving to the Democrats. Donald Trump has led them into a trap and now he gets to hurt them for free for a while. I hope he fires thousands of bureaucrats and closes whichever agencies he can.
We tried civility and bipartisanship, and all we got were knives in our backs. Time to do something different. The Democrats are such aficionados of raw, naked power; maybe having it used on them will change their mind.
Niketas:
The bill needs 60 votes to pass. You may think the Republicans should make it a simple majority vote, or something of that sort, but at the moment (and ordinarily with such bills) 60 votes are needed. So my guess is – on that earlier vote you’re talking about – there was still a lot of wheeling and dealing going on, and the abstentions had to do with the fact that they knew there was zero chance of the 60 threshold being reached. They needed many more Democrats for that.
The CR under discussion is the same as Biden’s, by the way. So some of those abstentions might have been people who wanted more austerity rather than less.
Yesterday there were 55 votes for the bill. It didn’t pass.
As I understand it, the filibuster will stay with us, but the Senate can eliminate the 60-vote cloture requirement with a majority vote. It’s cloture that really kills bills. If they get past the cloture requirement, there can still be an old-fashioned filibuster (as Jeffries indulged in some weeks back), but realistically it comes to an end and the vote happens. So far cloture has been eliminated only for nominations, first S. Ct. justices, then all nominations.
Democrats are the definition of good.
If they do it, it is good. It doesn’t matter what they have said before when others do the same thing. Others are not Democrats and are therefore most likely bad.
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It ought to be interesting to see how Trump treats a shut-down. Two things that would excite me: (1) no back pay for bureaucrats when the shutdown ends–make them want to start getting paid again and (2) reverse the “Washington Monument” strategy–keep parks and things that normal people use open and shut down the federal spending machine that redistributes money from the productive to the unproductive.
I’m curious about Trump’s layoff threats:
________________________________
Shutdown fight casts a shadow over jobs as Trump prepares for largest federal resignation in US history
The shutdown isn’t just about budgets — it’s also about jobs, and possibly careers amid a weakening labor market
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/shutdown-fight-casts-shadow-over-jobs-trump-prepares-largest-federal-resignation-us-history
________________________________
Sounds worth it to me.
I suspect a last-minute deal.
Some reports say Trump will use the shutdown to permanently lay off employees in programs he doesn’t support. This is in addition to the 100,000 or so who took the buyout offer and are leaving federal service today.
I’m reading that the Deep State bureaucrats — er, federal employees — who took Trump’s early retirement packages are having a tough time finding new jobs.
Quelle surprise.
It’s going to be worse for those who just get axed without a nice package and come in even later to look for work.
Cue the world’s smallest violin.
From Steve Hayward’s Substack, about the projected shutdown:
I was fired and downsized (called it that, but I was fired)numerous times. It took time and hard work to find another job, but I did. No one cried for me when I was fired. OK, it was a mixed bag – sometime my fault entirely, sometimes not.
I wonder if the department heads were told many months ago to identify those people and programs that can be shut down. I hope they are prepared.
It is said that Trump will be able to do things irreversibly.
It’s really important to click through on these and look up the actual votes if necessary.
The vote that happened just now was on the Dem’s proposed budget changes, and the Republicans voted not to pass it 53-47. And that’s fine.
But the Republicans could pass their own 53-47 if they wanted to. They choose not to. They chose the same way the last time it came up, four days ago, when 8 Republicans abstained and the budget was not passed–it would have passed easily if those eight had voted for it instead of abstaining.
Some Senate Republicans want to somehow get paid off before a budget gets passed. I’m not in the smoke-filled rooms so I don’t know who or what they are holding out for, but I can count to 51.
@Sennacherib:It is said that Trump will be able to do things irreversibly.
I think this is only true in the sense that people who get fired don’t come back to work when the budget is passed. They’re not being furloughed.
According to Google AI:
____________________________
As of October 1, 2025, the U.S. Congress is facing a critical budget showdown with the government funding deadline having just passed on September 30.
The Republican-controlled House has passed a stopgap continuing resolution containing significant cuts to healthcare programs, which is now under consideration in the Senate.
This places Senate Democrats in a difficult position: they must either accept a measure they strongly oppose or risk a government shutdown.
____________________________
It seems Republicans have the whip hand here. Trump’s threats are serious.
The Republican cuts to healthcare are unspecified but I believe they are the Democrat demands to provide healthcare to illegals.
Huxley “The Republican cuts to healthcare are unspecified but I believe they are the Democrat demands to provide healthcare to illegals.”
I heard today the healthcare changes which Dems are demanding are to extend the subsidies to Medicaid & to Obamacare that Biden implemented. Covid subsidies actually. Which allowed many able-bodied people to get medicaid — with no work requirements — and expanded subsidies for Obamacare to families making over half a million dollars, in some states.
Dems want all that to continue forever, of course. Covid was just an opportunity to get it embedded.
The free healthcare for illegals is just a cherry on top.
Niketas Choniates on September 30, 2025 at 7:35 pm said:
“I think this is only true in the sense that people who get fired don’t come back to work when the budget is passed. ”
While most of us tend to favor a net reduction in the size of the bureaucracy, this struck me as a good rationale to tell both the Dems and Republican senators that we can’t hire these people back until you finish confirming the politically nominated managers to manage them. “Do your job! so the (still remaining) bureaucrats can do theirs!”
We went past the red line.
https://nypost.com/2025/10/01/us-news/us-government-shuts-down-after-senate-democrats-fail-to-support-stopgap-funding-bill/
Niketas Choniates:
Some Senate Republicans want to somehow get paid off before a budget gets passed. I’m not in the smoke-filled rooms so I don’t know who or what they are holding out for, but I can count to 51.
———————————
Interesting.
So Trump is playing chicken not just with the Dems, but with the squishy Congressional RINOs. Either that, or they are finally on board with the MAGA administration, and are working to precipitate the shutdown.
The shutdown allows sweeping cuts with virtually no risk of lawfare entanglements… maybe the Republican idiots in Congress finally understand that they will be running in the next election based on their MAGA bona fides.
I have noticed that the Democrats come up with numbers which are never challenged.
From the “Quelle Surprise!” File:
So you were wondering about Chicago’s version of Sunny Cal’s High-Speed train
boondoggleMEGA-GRIFT?(Well, even if you weren’t…)
“Obama Library Funds Are Secretly Flowing To Dark Money Networks”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/obama-library-funds-are-secretly-flowing-dark-money-networks
And then there’s posse Comey-tatus…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/curious-tale-columbia-professor-daniel-richman
the thing is personnel jedi russ vouight can determine who gets fired and who doesn’t right, yes the details are what are in the reopening package,
Niketas Choniates–
The Republicans submitted what is called a “clean CR.” That means they took the existing Continuing Resolution and changed nothing on it but the expiration date. That existing Continuing Resolution was voted on and passed during the Biden Administration. It was renewed earlier this year when Charles Schumer relented to the White House, i.e., he opted to avoid a shutdown, incurring the wrath of elements of the Democrat Party.
The existing Continuing Resolution, therefore, is (or was) funding the government at levels approved by Democrats when Biden was President. The Big Beautiful Bill did include cuts, but remember, they were so peripheral Elon Musk split from the President in frustration. Additional cuts were made via rescission. But beyond that, nothing was changed but the date.
It is the Democrats’ demands holding up funding the government. They want health care for their clients, illegal aliens, paid for by U.S. citizens. They also want a return of funding for public media. The Democrats are a minority party pretending to represent the majority of the American people.
So, yes, the Republicans could end the shutdown, but it’s not their fault we are where we are. Truthfully, the Democrats’ demands amount to a poison pill. They knew the Republicans wouldn’t agree, forcing the shutdown. The Democrats are hoping to inflict a public relations hit on the President, betting that he won’t damage their other client base, the entrenched federal bureaucracy. I think they have miscalculated.
Top of the sheet: majority required for vote 3/5ths.
3/5ths of 100 is? . . . . . 60.
Is 44 + 8, 60? Nope. It’s 52.
So yes, that rule would require a rule change. A rule change — I take it — by simple majority 51.
Precedent? History of same? Calculations of effect of such a change to future procedures as boons or harms? I don’t know.
Still, this is a necessary if potentially practical step assumed, yet here unmentioned. Why, why not? Again, I don’t know. But thems the numbers as they appear today.
@sdferr:Precedent? History of same?
They just did it on September 12. Neo posted on it. They set aside the filibuster whenever they want to.
@Mitchell Strand:The Republicans submitted what is called a “clean CR.” So, yes, the Republicans could end the shutdown, but it’s not their fault we are where we are.
I don’t understand what “fault” has to do with anything. On September 25th they could have passed the clean CR the House submitted but 8 Republicans in the Senate abstained, so it was defeated 48-44. If they had voted for it instead of abstaining, that clean CR would be the budget now. And there’s an end on it.
The GOP Senate leadership did not actually want the clean CR or they never would allow those abstentions, they would have whipped a majority vote. It’s not like those 8 Republicans were home with the flu.
I have to admit I really like the trolling Trump is doing on the Democrats: the video with Jeffries and Schumer, the pic of the 2028 hat in the Oval Office, The Ds hate being made fun of, and we need more of that. Best weapon against their constant “Nazi!” “Hitler!”, and “facist!” is to just make fun of them and laugh at them. Really gets under their skin.
Context counts, still. This isn’t a question of sheparding through Presidential nominees is it? It’s a bit more consequential (and I may presume in charity pleads for a modicum of bipartisan concurrence, either on traditional or practical grounds as they choose). I’m willing to hear their arguments either for or against a rule change in this circumstance, but I don’t hear those either way issuing from the political actors themselves. Do you?
I’m also aware you like to charge It’s merely “theater”. Fine. Be aware from my point of view that “theater” originated in sacred acts undertaken on the slopes of the Acropolis.
@sdferr:I don’t hear those either way issuing from the political actors themselves. Do you?
Why would we expect politicians to explain directly–or even honestly–what their goals, methods, and intentions are? We have to deduce them from their actions.
Be aware from my point of view that “theater” originated in sacred acts undertaken on the slopes of the Acropolis.
Not really sure what “sacred” has to do with Congressional pork-barreling and double-dealing.
So much the worse for you my friend.
@Niketas
Here’s what I should have said to start with…
At this point, I don’t even care. The Republicans have finally stood up on their hind legs instead of caving to the Democrats. Donald Trump has led them into a trap and now he gets to hurt them for free for a while. I hope he fires thousands of bureaucrats and closes whichever agencies he can.
We tried civility and bipartisanship, and all we got were knives in our backs. Time to do something different. The Democrats are such aficionados of raw, naked power; maybe having it used on them will change their mind.
Niketas:
The bill needs 60 votes to pass. You may think the Republicans should make it a simple majority vote, or something of that sort, but at the moment (and ordinarily with such bills) 60 votes are needed. So my guess is – on that earlier vote you’re talking about – there was still a lot of wheeling and dealing going on, and the abstentions had to do with the fact that they knew there was zero chance of the 60 threshold being reached. They needed many more Democrats for that.
The CR under discussion is the same as Biden’s, by the way. So some of those abstentions might have been people who wanted more austerity rather than less.
Yesterday there were 55 votes for the bill. It didn’t pass.
As I understand it, the filibuster will stay with us, but the Senate can eliminate the 60-vote cloture requirement with a majority vote. It’s cloture that really kills bills. If they get past the cloture requirement, there can still be an old-fashioned filibuster (as Jeffries indulged in some weeks back), but realistically it comes to an end and the vote happens. So far cloture has been eliminated only for nominations, first S. Ct. justices, then all nominations.
Democrats are the definition of good.
If they do it, it is good. It doesn’t matter what they have said before when others do the same thing. Others are not Democrats and are therefore most likely bad.