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When President Donald Trump announced last week he wanted Congress to “pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill,” that should have dropped the chances of a federal shutdown to near zero.

After all, shutdown threats tend to get driven by conservative hard-liners intent on cutting spending — and who better than Trump to pull them in line and keep the government open?

So it’s quite a testament to how dramatically Trump has shaken up Washington over the past six weeks that the likelihood of a shutdown hasn’t abated. In fact, according to my reporting, it might actually have increased.

This time, it’s Democrats who are itching for a fight — over the Department of Government Efficiency cuts that Trump has blessed and deputized mogul Elon Musk has gleefully carried out.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      181·
      1 day ago

      Republicans have the votes to get their agenda passed on any strict party line vote. But the margins are extremely thin. In the House in particular, right now due to vacancies Republicans can only afford to lose a single vote. If two Republicans vote with all Democrats against something, the vote fails.

      So, if Republicans can’t keep their caucus in lock-step on these votes, they would need a few Democratic votes instead. Democrats are entirely justified to demand some things in exchange for those votes. They can’t demand the world, but can demand specific, targeted things. Reining in DOGE should be item 1 for them.

      And Democrats have to be careful, because if they start these negotiations for support and they go nowhere, Republicans can go to their people and say “Democrats are shutting down the government”, and they will believe it. When in reality it is Republican infighting that is shutting it down, since they can’t keep their own caucus together on this.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        50·
        1 day ago

        Republicans can go to their people and say “Democrats are shutting down the government”, and they will believe it.

        This specifically will happen regardless of what democrats do

        • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          1 day ago

          Right, but there’s a difference in messaging between Democrats saying “Republicans were elected by the People to be in charge, and they’re doing a piss-poor job at it, and can’t organize themselves enough to keep the Government open” and “Republicans talked with us, but weren’t serious about keeping the government open”. The first clearly lays blame, while the second shares it for no good reason.

          MAGAs won’t care about the distinction (nor will Lemmings, for that matter). But all the folks who voted for Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024 will. They did not put Republicans in charge to burn it all down like the MAGAs did, they did it because shit’s expensive and they didn’t trust Biden/Harris to fix it. Democrats need to reinforce to these voters that Republicans don’t care about egg prices at all.