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Opinion
Government shutdowns are terrible. This one had to happen
I am writing this in the hours before the American government is scheduled to shut down. It is tragic that our political dysfunction has reached this point, again. The shutdown will be a disaster for all sorts of blameless citizens.
I also believe the Democrats are right to stand up to Republicans. And to reject any GOP spending bill that doesn’t roll back the cuts to Medicaid and insurance subsidies that Republicans jammed through in their widely reviled One Big Beautiful Bill Act. These cuts will result in more than 3 million Americans losing their health insurance in 2026, and 14 million more over the next decade. Taken together, they amount to a cynical GOP ploy to destroy the reforms instituted by the Affordable Care Act, and in expanding Medicaid — a wildly popular program — that gives health care to millions more people.
The notion that President Trump and congressional Republicans would agree to negotiate these health care issues after Democrats pass a short-term spending bill is, in a word, laughable. Trump, who once claimed the president should be “blamed” for any government shutdown, forced the last shutdown, which lasted for more than a month in 2018 during his first term, by demanding that Congress fund his infamous wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump is constitutionally incapable of operating in good faith. Last March, a shutdown was narrowly averted, only because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to drop Democratic demands around health care funding. That only emboldened Trump, whose MAGA movement is psychologically predicated on the raw pursuit of power. Its playbook is numbingly familiar at this point: demonize and dominate all perceived enemies.
Trump doesn’t even appear to understand—or care to understand—that millions of Americans, including those who gave him their votes last November, will lose access to health care because of his signature bill, which pays for massive tax cuts to his billionaire buddies, in part, by gutting Medicaid.
Recalling his meeting with Trump, Schumer said he “laid out to the president some of the consequences of what’s happening in health care, and by his face, he looked like he heard about them for the first time.”
Trump doesn’t want to govern. He wants to rule.
But Americans, for the most part, do not like how he’s ruling. According to the latest polling from the New York Times, 54% of Americans disapprove of the job he’s doing. The numbers are just as bleak when it comes to specific policy areas, such as trade, the economy, immigration and foreign affairs.
Voters don’t like his mass firings of federal workers, his inflationary tariffs, his coddling of corporations, his attacks on universities, his aggressive immigration policy, his displays of “masculinity,” his blatant self-dealing and his effort to militarize American cities.
He can’t pass any of these measures via a bracingly thin Republican majority in Congress, which is why he has had to resort to executive orders, asserting “emergencies” as the rationale for carrying out actions that most Americans detest.
In other words, Trump and his congressional enablers are weak — far more vulnerable than they want you to believe. Voters handed them the power to act, and they have abused that power. And they are refusing to even be held accountable by constituents for their actions.
[Democrats] are refusing to participate in an administration that refuses to work in good faith with members of the opposite party.
This is why Democrats should use the small bit of leverage they have to punch the bully squarely in the mouth. They are refusing to participate in an administration that refuses to work in good faith with members of the opposite party.
Unlike in March, when Democrats caved to keep the government open, this time around they are holding the line, betting that voters will reward them for showing some backbone. Good on them.
The polling isn’t exactly a slam dunk. According to a new a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, 38% of Americans would most blame Republicans for a shutdown, while only 27% would blame Democrats. But in this era of hyper-partisan politics, nothing is. Congressional Democrats believe it’s worth the risk, and I agree.
The message from Democrats should be simple: We are fighting for you. We will not let Trump and the MAGA movement take away your health care. Any government that strips health care from its own citizens should be shut down.
Americans of all stripes have been waiting for Democrats to stand up and fight, to make it clear that Trump and his henchman do not have a free license to dismantle our democracy.
To folks like Vice President JD Vance, who are out in public clutching their pearls about the Democrats refusing to stand down, the message should be this: take your medicine. Vance, after all, was happy to endorse shutting down the government when Democrats were in charge.
“Yeah man,” he said a few years ago, “why should we be trying to force this government shutdown fight to get something out of it…like, why have a government if it’s not a functioning government?”
Precisely, JD.
