I am glad to see Democrats getting on board with the DOGE efforts to reduce government spending, but they are going about it a little too hard, even for my taste. For a long time, there has been a faction in the Republican base that rallied against welfare spending, but even most of them would agree that suddenly stopping the SNAP food benefits going to its 41 million recipients in the US is a little too extreme.
Again, I am very glad to see Chuck Schumer and his fellow Senate Democrats come out against welfare spending—and I sure hope their constituencies get that message as well. However, I would recommend a gradual phasing out to a reduced level for welfare benefits, as opposed to an immediate halt. Senator Schumer, please, think of the poor people in your home state of New York. Even after your newfound libertarian leanings and despite your sudden urge to tell them to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’, you must see that some of them are legitimately in need of government assistance.
Evidently, I am being facetious here. I am fully aware that Senate Democrats are not voting against the continued funding of the government, and thus the funding of the SNAP programme, which is set to run out on 1 November, because of their newly discovered conviction of small government and reduced welfare spending. However, the result will be the same either way: tens of millions of Americans will not be getting their usual food assistance from the federal government. You can imagine the distress it will cause for the most destitute, most vulnerable families in the United States.
However, it is perfectly fair and reasonable to take Democrats’ own words for why they voted 13 times against a clean Continued Resolution—for ‘leverage’ against ‘mean, old’ President Donald J Trump. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts is just one example of the Democrats in Congress who have used that exact wording to describe their motivation to vote to shut down the federal government.
The fact of the matter is that the apocalyptic scenario Democrats warned of in case Donald Trump was re-elected never materialized. After some market turmoil caused by President Trump’s tariff frenzy in the spring, things smoothed out real quick. The Democrats found themselves in desperate need to manufacture a crisis just to get the voters’ attention.
The contrast was stark right from the beginning of the shutdown: while Chuck Schumer’s crew was manically repeating their mantra about healthcare on why they voted for the shutdown, President Trump travelled to the Middle East to strike a historic peace that freed all remaining living Israeli hostages from the grasp of the terror group Hamas. Then and there, it was quite clear that this was not going to go well for the Democrats.
‘The Democrats found themselves in desperate need to manufacture a crisis just to get the voters’ attention’
On the day the shutdown began, Dems led the 2026 generic ballot vote in the RealClearPolitics aggregate by 3.3 points. Now, their lead is down to 2.4, and it has been as low as 1.6 points since the shutdown. Polling and early vote data suggest that, even if Republican Jack Ciatarelli likely will not win, the gubernatorial election will be closer than the 2024 presidential election in once deep-blue New Jersey.
As I wrote above, this is not going to go well for Democrats.
I have covered the shutdown in an opinion piece even before it began. I titled it ‘The Looming Government Shutdown: Don’t Blame Democrats, Blame the System’—and it looks like I have to walk that back somewhat. After 29 days of shutdown, I cannot help but blame the Democrats.
However, in the broader picture, the main thesis still stands. Giving the party in the minority in both chambers of Congress the ability to shut the federal government down as long as they hold 41 seats in the Senate was bound to backfire at some point in history. I am glad, however, that it was the Democrats that ended up exercising that very desperate option, not the party I support, the GOP.
Thus, the long-term solution still seems evident to me. Just like confirming presidential appointments, make the so-called ‘nuclear option’ available for Continued Resolution bills as well—meaning they could pass with a simple majority, or at least lower the threshold to a more easily obtainable number than 60.
Without such measures, there is nothing stopping Democrats from doing this again and again, even if this current CR finally passes. Why don’t Republicans just ‘return the favour’ and do the same when eventually they end up in the minority in Congress? Well, in that case, Democrats will surely use that opportunity to get rid of the filibuster, as the majority of them in the Senate had already expressed the desire to do so in early 2022.
If we continue on this course, all that will happen is that when the Republicans are in power, there will be continued lapses in government funding, and thus in the payout of welfare benefits—which will just hurt Republicans nationally. The 60-vote threshold in the Senate for funding bills is a very glaring exploit that needs to be fixed immediately.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has recently explained the distinction on political commentator Ben Shapiro’s show: confirming presidential nominees is on the so-called ‘executive calendar’ for the Senate, while CR and appropriation bills are on the so-called ‘legislative calendars’. What he never explained, however, is why CRs cannot simply be moved to the executive calendar.
Such a move is desperately needed—unless Senator Thune wants to face off against the destructive Democrats in the Senate again and again in the second Trump term.
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