- - Shutdown fight leaves Democrats with no good options

Al WeaverSeptember 27, 2025 at 8:00 PM

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The shutdown fight has left Democrats with few options, and none of them are good.

Faced with President Trump’s refusal to negotiate, they can either cave after weeks of tough talk and support the Republicans’ spending bill, or they can hold firm against it and watch the government shutdown.

The first option is politically fraught, providing an endorsement, however reluctant, of the Republicans’ go-it-alone budget strategy while ensuring a sharp backlash from a liberal base that wants to see Democrats fighting tooth and nail against the president.

The second is practically perilous, since a shutdown is guaranteed to hurt the economy — a dynamic Democrats have invoked over a long history of battling with Republicans to keep the government open.

Over the long term, none of that may matter. Republicans control all the power in Washington, and most voters have historically blamed the majority party for shutdowns — a sentiment that could help Democrats in several high-stakes state elections in November, if not the midterms next year.

In the near-term, however, the debate is creating a dilemma for Democratic leaders, who want to stand firm against Trump and his policy agenda — particularly his cuts to health care — without helping the administration’s ongoing effort to gut the federal government of the workers and programs Democrats hold dear.

“There’s no good option,” said one Senate Democratic aide, arguing that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) support for a GOP spending bill in March has put them behind the 8-ball in the current fight. “It took a lot of people in the caucus by surprise, so people now feel like they’ve got to make up for that and satisfy the base.”

“It’s doubly made no good because it’s very clear that Republicans want [a shutdown]. Trump wants it. He’s fine with that, happy to have it,” the aide continued. “I don’t really know what your good option here is when they want one.”

While a stopgap bill to avert a shutdown has passed the House mostly along party lines, Republicans need the support of at least eight Senate Democrats — assuming Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) again votes against it — to advance the measure.

With the hourglass winding down to the Tuesday night deadline, that leaves Democrats in a tough spot as they embrace a role they’ve rarely adopted: The party making demands in a shutdown fight.

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have been adamant that Republicans won’t find Democratic support without action on Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end — a demand Republicans have maintained is a non-starter.

On top of a lack of movement toward averting the shutdown, the administration indicated this week that it plans to make a potential funding lapse as painful as possible for the minority party.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought revealed in a memo days ago that the administration is planning mass firings of federal workers in the event of a shutdown, rather than just furloughing them as has been custom in the past.

The move was designed to pressure Democrats into backing the Republicans’ “clean” stopgap measure, which funds the government through late November, largely at current levels. But Democrats are not taking the threat seriously and believe that, given the administration’s actions in recent months, a shutdown is becoming a live option.

“Given how the administration is approaching this, I’m not so sure Democrats have much of a choice than to fight it for all it’s worth,” said Jim Manley, who served as a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Even those Democrats representing the regions around Washington, where federal jobs are abundant, are dismissing the OMB threat and urging Democratic leaders to hold the line in opposition to the Republican spending bill.

“Anyone who understands how the federal government works knows that the administration has no greater authority or ability to conduct mass firings, or RIFs, in a shutdown than they do when the government is open,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.). “So the threat is — in my view, it’s bluster.”

Questions in recent days have persisted over whether Democrats will remain united throughout this shutdown fight, especially in the wake of the March funding battle, when nine Senate Democrats joined Schumer in supporting the GOP bill, which they viewed as a lesser evil than a shutdown.

Heading into the Oct. 1 deadline, some Democratic senators, including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) are voicing similar fears about the harm of a shutdown, and continuing to push for a compromise. But any deal would likely require organizing eight Democrats to break with leadership.

And for now, Democratic leaders are dug in while leaders of both parties have remained in their corners and are continuing to talk past one another, especially after Trump nixed a bipartisan meeting, planned for last Thursday, one day after he’d agreed to it. The Republicans’ refusal to negotiate — combined with the decision of House GOP leaders to cancel votes on the last two days before the shutdown deadline — has fueled the Democratic charges that GOP leaders are gunning for a shutdown.

Trump’s Friday visit to the Ryder Cup on Long Island only stoked those accusations.

“He didn’t have the time to meet with Democratic leaders and fund the government and address the Republican health care crisis, but Donald Trump right now, as we speak, is at a golf event?” Jeffries told reporters Friday in the Capitol.

“It’s outrageous,” he added. “It’s because Republicans want to shut down the government.”

The shutdown dilemma is much less pronounced for Democrats in the House.

Behind Jeffries, they voted almost unanimously against the Republicans’ budget bill in March, citing levels of spending they deemed insufficient to protect kids, veterans and other vulnerable populations. Given that history, it’s no surprise that they’ve lined up against those same spending levels this month and rejected the Republicans’ argument that the legislation is “clean.”

“If they’re continuing a policy related to legislation that they passed in the House on a partisan basis, how is that clean?” Jeffries said. “It’s not clean, it’s dirty. It’s not bipartisan, it’s partisan.”

House Democrats, however, have the luxury of rejecting the Republican bill without any practical ramifications, since their opposition did not prevent GOP leaders from passing the legislation.

Senate Democrats, with the powers of the filibuster, have a different calculation to make, since their votes decide the success or failure of the bill. Schumer’s support for the March spending bill has only complicated that math, raising charges that he flip-flopped for solely political reasons.

But in the eyes of some, Democrats have precious few opportunities to throw their weight around, especially after Republicans acted on their own to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and a rescissions package that further angered the minority party.

“They forced Democrats into this by not working in a bipartisan way on anything. They kind of forced their hand,” a former Democratic aide said. “If it’s not this, there is no other time.”

“Democrats have to strike at the one chance they have.”

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