There’s less than a week to go before the deadline to prevent a government shutdown. And make no mistake about it, Democrats want a shutdown to happen.
They always do.
We’ve seen before that every time there’s a government shutdown both sides blame the other, but we know which side the mainstream media takes. In fact, when a shutdown occurs while a Democrat is president, said president will deliberately maximize the impact of the shutdown, knowing that the media will ensure that Republicans are the ones who will get most of the blame. Bill Clinton did it in 1995, and Barack Obama did it in 2013.
Last month, we narrowly averted a shutdown at the 11th hour—but Democrats tried everything they could to force one, knowing that Republicans would be blamed by the media for it.
As time was running out, Democrats claimed they wanted to review the stopgap resolution, despite the fact that history has shown they need to pass bills to find out what’s in them.
Even Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries actively prolonged the voting process by exploiting a rule that allowed party leaders to speak indefinitely.
And then there’s the infamous incident where Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulled a fire alarm during the vote in an apparent attempt to further delay the vote.
With a mere five days left for the House to avert a government showdown, what tricks and stunts will Democrats pull to make a shutdown happen? I suspect Bowman won’t pull another fire alarm, but make no mistake about it: the Democrats will attempt to force a shutdown one way or another. They have learned that a government shutdown is a prime opportunity to make Republicans scapegoats, and this will also be leadership test for newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the speakership after the stopgap funding bill was passed last month. So there’s no doubt that a lot is riding on Johnson’s ability to unify House Republicans to get the government funded.
"In my first two weeks as Speaker, the House passed 3 standalone appropriations bills. I am committed to returning Washington to regular order, but you can’t fix a decades old broken system in a matter of weeks,” Johnson said in a post on X/Twitter Sunday morning. "The CR we will bring to the floor next week keeps the government open, prevents a holiday omnibus, and delivers the debate the American people deserve on supplemental spending."
So far, there are two Republicans who have said they’ll vote against it: Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). According to ABC News, Johnson knows he’ll need Democrat votes to get it passed. So, unfortunately, we can expect the same kind of drama this time around as we saw last month.
But the real question is: what are Democrats going to do to force a shutdown?
