Round-up: Shutdown! Could this time be different? Could it end the filibuster?

Analysis of the week's events

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Another shutdown

The U.S. government has shut down - again.

Earlier this week, Congress failed to agree to a pass a budget, and so government agencies don’t have the funds to keep on operating. Although some essential functions remain operational - like the military and the FBI - most others close down. Government employees don’t get paid until the shutdown is over, and all kinds of things that are necessary to keep the economy and society humming don’t happen. The economic cost of shutdowns typically runs into the billions or tens of billions of dollars, depending how long they last.

The proximate cause of the shutdown is that Senate Democrats refused to agree to a budget unless Republicans (a) agree to extend healthcare tax credits and (b) agree to take steps to prevent Donald Trump from just randomly deciding that he is going to cut government agencies or programs that he doesn’t like. Also hovering in the background - but not actually an explicitly stated reason for refusing the budget - is (c) the Democratic base is spoiling for a fight with the Trump regime and doesn’t want its leaders to fund Trump’s authoritarian crackdown.

The politics of all of this is messy for the Democrats, primarily because there seems to be almost zero chance of them getting what they want. In the history of American politics, the track record of parties using government shutdowns to win policy concessions is basically zero. The public always turns against the party causing the shutdown and then they cave.

It’s particularly hard for Democrats to win this way, because Republicans just fundamentally care less about whether the government is open or not. Even in a shutdown, the military and law enforcement keep functioning and retirees keep getting their pensions. The bits of the government that shut down - like national parks or food assistance for the poor - are bits that Republicans mostly wish didn’t exist anyway.

In terms of raw electoral politics, probably the best case you can make for what the Democrats are doing is that they are drawing attention to the expiring healthcare subsidies. This is a legitimately big deal - if the subsidies expire, millions of people will lose their healthcare and tens of millions will see it become more expensive. Healthcare is an issue on which the public trusts Democrats more than Republicans, so every day that the headlines are about how the GOP is screwing over healthcare is a good one for the Democrats.

The problem is that even if a few news cycles focus on this issue, that’s likely to give way quite quickly to coverage of the consequences of the shutdown - nurses and soldiers aren’t getting paid! - and how Democrats are refusing to allowing a reopening. I question how long Senate Democrats are going to be able to stand up to that pressure.

Could this time be different?

On the other hand, I’m also open to the possibility that this isn’t going to be like other shutdowns.

The main case for thinking that this time might be different is that Trump is in the White House doing Trump-y things. Senate Democrats aren’t just fighting to extend healthcare subsidies but also in support of much broader principles.

The first, as mentioned above, is Congressional control of the power of the purse. In his first months in office, Trump has moved to unilaterally cancel tranches of funding with which he disagrees. This isn’t supposed to happen: if the president can simply refuse to spend money that Congress authorizes, then Congress loses all of its power. The White House could just look at any law it dislikes and say “nope, sorry, we’re not going to spend money to enforce that”.

Earlier this year, Republicans also pulled off a more sneaky move, which is to use a process known as “rescissions” to cancel funding. Rescissions involves a vote by Congress to basically say “earlier we told you to spend this money, but now we’ve changed our minds”. But here’s the kicker. Because of the filibuster, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass a budget, and only 50 votes to pass a rescissions package. Republicans have 50 votes in the Senate, so they can unilaterally undo any budget that Democrats agree to.

Both of these things - Trump unilaterally stopping funding and rescissions - are bad. But it’s not like Democrats have any real leverage right now to stop these things from happening. Unless they’re going to endure the pain of an endless shutdown in order to make a point, they’re going to have to eventually fold. That’s why I think that even though this shutdown is partly a matter of high principle, it’s probably going to end the same way that shutdowns usually do: with the party making the demands folding.

I also see one scenario in which Trump might fold.