There is an old saying: “Never start a fight that you can’t finish.” Unfortunately, this is what Senate Democrats just did when they folded (again) on the shutdown fight without even a fig leaf of a win. This is a loss for Democrats, a loss for Republicans, because you need a competent and hard-nosed bargaining partner if you are going to make good policy, and a loss for the country.
In the end, this is a failure of leadership, and Democrats should ask Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down. He is overmatched by the moment.
Admittedly, our national government is a mess, and it should never have come to a shutdown negotiation. But Republicans control every branch of government, the current administration is running over everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, and this was the one lever Democrats had to try to stop the administration.
So, what happened? Our federal government reached the end of the fiscal year and had not passed a single one of the 12 appropriations bills needed to keep the government open. (In fact, Congress has not passed a budget on time since 1996.)
When this happens, Congress has to pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government for a few more months while they scramble to hammer out a deal. However, in this case, Democrats decided they had had enough and, in the Senate, they decided as a group that they would not lend eight votes needed to overcome a 60-vote filibuster and pass the continuing resolution. They demanded that Republicans address the expiration of the enhanced health insurance premium tax credits before they would support these bills.
Trump acknowledged GOP was being blamed for the shutdown
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
This was a fight worth having. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that insurance costs for Georgians on the exchange will increase by 75% next year without the tax credit.
The increases are similar across the country. For millions of families this means they will not be able to afford health insurance at all. Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been raising the alarm.
Less discussed but perhaps more important, the fight was also over congressional authority over the budget and in essence, enforcing the rule of law.
This too was a fight worth having. The Trump Administration has been ruthlessly shutting down programs, refusing to spend legally appropriated funds, moving money around in the budget extralegally, firing federal employees protected by civil service law — actions that are widely considered to be illegal not only by Democrats but by pretty much anyone who has ever been involved with the federal budget process.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is taking advantage of the fact that lawsuits are slow and cumbersome and by the time the litigation has been resolved, the deed is done — the program is shuttered, the employees long gone. We are in the middle of a rolling constitutional crisis — unacknowledged in the general media perhaps — but very real.
Over the past month, Republicans were quite pointedly not even at the table to negotiate: The Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson had sent everyone on the House side home for well over a month.
On the Senate side, the Republican Majority Leader John Thune kept putting variations of the same continuing resolution on the Senate floor over and over again, while President Donald Trump was busy bulldozing the White House and jetting around the world receiving golden crowns and gilt golf balls. He hardly bothered to meet with Democratic leaders. He was so dismissive of their concerns. I thought this was a terrible look and many Republicans did too.
Meanwhile, the administration was busy “shooting the hostages,” from denying people food stamps to shutting down flights to canceling major Democratic state infrastructure projects. But as far as I could tell, the sum of this behavior meant they were losing sympathy with the American public and this contributed to their defeats at the ballot box on November 7th. Donald Trump himself even acknowledged that Republicans were being blamed for the shutdown.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Democrats demonstrated weakness and spinelessness
I have never seen a party walk away from a hand that they were winning when the stakes were so high. There were many options available for a compromise that would have been a win.
In fact, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had just put a one-year extension of the premium tax credits on the table. But instead, a group of eight Senate Democrats chose to turn their back on this compromise when the ink was barely dry and just walk away from the table empty-handed.
I suspect that the Democratic senators who folded were thinking that Republicans will now “own” the health insurance cost increases. Maybe so. But the Democrats now “own” weakness and the perception that they are too spineless to stand up to Trump and too spineless to deliver for the American people. I recognize most senators including Georgia’s Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff did not fold. But unfortunately, it is still a reflection on the brand and on the party leadership.
Some commentators have pointed out that the continuing resolution only keeps the government open through Jan. 30 of next year, and if Democrats don’t like the terms they can shut the government down again! But really, why bother? Who will ever believe again that the Senate under Schumer’s leadership won’t fold. They’ve shown that they can’t finish the fight.
Carolyn Bourdeaux is a former Democratic member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th District. She is a contributor to the AJC.
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