{"id":5021,"date":"2025-02-10T22:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T06:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=5021"},"modified":"2025-02-10T22:17:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T06:17:05","slug":"democrats-plot-strategy-in-shutdown-fight-against-trump-not-a-lot-of-good-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=5021","title":{"rendered":"Democrats plot strategy in shutdown fight against Trump: \u2018Not a lot of good options\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Democrats have been powerless as they\u2019ve watched\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0systematically move to dismantle federal agencies and push the bounds of his office with little concern about the fallout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But they do have one looming piece of leverage: the March 14 deadline<\/a> to avert a government shutdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

House and Senate Democrats at the highest levels are now engaged in a fierce debate about what exactly to demand in their first big negotiation with Trump and how forcefully to push, according to conversations with more than two dozen members and senior aides.

Trump and GOP leaders will need Democratic support in the Senate, where 60 votes would be required to advance the bill. In the House, they have to contend with a contingent of conservatives unlikely to vote for any spending bill. While rank-and-file Democrats are eager to play hardball with Trump, other senior Democrats are uncertain how firm of a line to draw, fearing they may be forced to capitulate in a funding feud and ultimately appear even weaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, have been in talks about how best to use the funding deadline to counter Trump. But some top Democrats worry that even if they won policy concessions, Trump would only ignore the law \u2014 as they believe he has in some of his initial assaults on federal agencies<\/a> \u2014 so a knockdown, drag-out battle and potential shutdown could be all for naught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the foundational role of Congress is the power of the purse, why would we ever believe them again on an appropriations deal?\u201d said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be harder for us to work together because it\u2019s harder for us to trust each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as one senior aide described the situation: \u201cThere\u2019s just not a lot of good options for Democrats.\u201d

Many exasperated Democrats, even some from battleground House districts, insist a shutdown shouldn\u2019t be off the table if Republicans can\u2019t put up the votes themselves. But Schumer and other governing-minded senators are proceeding more cautiously, wary of provoking a damaging shutdown and getting a share of the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, even as Jeffries and Schumer have intensified their attacks on Elon Musk\u2019s role in Trump\u2019s government, it\u2019s uncertain whether they\u2019ll take aim at the tech billionaire when it comes time to negotiate a funding deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview last week, Jeffries indicated Democrats\u2019 legislative push to block Musk\u2019s access<\/a> to government payment systems is not \u201cat the moment\u201d one of their demands in the funding fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are bipartisan negotiations that are underway right now to try to reach a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,\u201d Jeffries told CNN. \u201cI\u2019ve encouraged those bipartisan conversations to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But other Democrats say there must be a steep price for any Democratic votes.

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to keep on bailing him out,\u201d added Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who is among a growing faction of Democrats who are ready to stare down Trump in a shutdown fight. \u201cWe\u2019re not a cheap date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the Capitol, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, stressed that the party needed to \u201cuse every point of leverage that we have\u201d and that democracy itself is at stake. But he also acknowledged the risks of fighting too hard and landing in a shutdown: \u201cNobody wants a shutdown, but we have leverage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Mark Warner, another veteran of congressional spending battles who represents a huge share of federal workers in Virginia, said the party needed to fight to \u201cprotect the rule of law\u201d and halt Trump\u2019s dismantling of government. \u201cBut who knows,\u201d he added grimly, \u201cthat may be all destroyed by the time [the deadline] comes about.\u201d

Trump\u2019s slashing of Washington programs \u2014 particularly for the US Agency for International Development<\/a> \u2014 has put Democrats in a quandary. While the party universally supports the mission of the agency and believes Musk\u2019s efforts to gut it flout federal law, some are uneasy about making foreign aid a centerpiece of a government shutdown fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs tragic as it is what\u2019s happened to USAID and our efforts abroad, I\u2019m not sure that it hits many Americans emotionally \u2014 certainly not outside the Beltway,\u201d said Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why a shutdown could still happen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Avoiding a shutdown will be difficult. Just over a month before the deadline, top House and Senate appropriators remain divided on reaching a basic agreement about how much Congress should spend in a fiscal year that\u2019s already halfway over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday accused Democrats of \u201ctrying to set up some sort of government shutdown\u201d and said their negotiators have retreated from talks in recent days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Democrats dispute his characterization. They say the bigger problem is that Republicans in the House and Senate\u00a0are at odds<\/a>\u00a0among themselves over the spending levels.

\u201cWe want to make sure that once we come to an agreement, it can\u2019t just be thrown out the window after it\u2019s passed into law by a lawless Trump-Elon administration that is currently running things,\u201d said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other contentious matters, such as California wildfire aid and a national debt limit increase<\/a>, could be rolled into the spending bill, making the ultimate outcome of the fight unpredictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRepublicans need us. So if they want to have meaningful conversations, they know where to find us,\u201d said Rep. Pete Aguilar, a California Democrat and No. 3 in leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some on the left are pressing for a fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf Senate Democrats don\u2019t have the gumption to do what is necessary in this moment, I believe that House Democrats will,\u201d Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said. Asked whether the confrontation could lead to a shutdown, she insisted her party wouldn\u2019t be to blame and the price of Democratic votes should be \u201cvery high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Don\u2019t swing at every pitch\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jeffries and his team are keeping close tabs on their most vulnerable members, many of whom represent Trump-won districts. The minority leader huddled with a group of battleground members Thursday to speak about the looming question of leverage, according to multiple people familiar with the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people like when their government shuts down, and I don\u2019t think the average person watches the debate so closely that they know whose fault it is,\u201d said Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat who won a critical battleground seat where Trump also won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Democrats try to apply lessons from their 2024 losses, they\u2019ve differed on how hard \u2014 and how often \u2014 to push back against Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Al Green of Texas, for instance, went to the floor Wednesday to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump. Two other House Democrats filmed themselves forcing their way into Johnson\u2019s office to discuss Musk\u2019s access to Treasury Department payment systems. A day later, Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman protested the GOP\u2019s holding of the National Prayer Breakfast in the Capitol, which he called symbolic of the MAGA \u201cdystopian authoritarian agenda.\u201d

In private meetings, Jeffries has told members to be selective, like his favorite baseball player Aaron Judge, and not \u201cswing at every pitch.\u201d But in Trump\u2019s flood-the-zone era of politics, not all Democrats agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s no harm in Democrats raising alarms every single day. I do not believe in this theory that we should sit in the bushes and wait for some moment down the line when things get really, really bad. They\u2019re bad right now,\u201d said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. \u201cWe\u2019re going to need everybody to be even louder in the coming days.\u201d

Reprinted from CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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