In danger, it’s important to focus on the essentials. Republicans out to maximize Trump/Musk executive power left Democrats no good road on funding the government. They forced a choice between two MAGA options – both would harm the American people and give away the power of Congress to rein Trump in. That’s where our focus must be.
A shutdown hands horrible powers to Trump and Musk to unlock emergency authorities, fire employees wholesale, and shutter agencies, using arcane shutdown tools like contingency plans, essentialness determinations and reductions in force. In ordinary times, the executive branch wants to end a shutdown; with the extremists in charge, this administration would relish the extraordinary powers of destruction a shutdown permits.
Getting back out of shutdown would not be easy, and could be done by Trump and Musk selectively, bringing only certain agencies or parts of agencies back out of shutdown. Trump could assert through all this that Congress abdicated its power, giving him maximum plenipotentiary executive authority, and courts might buy that.
The other option was called a CR, but it wasn’t a real one. It had no negotiation at all. House Democrats were powerless to stop it, and House and Senate Democrats were never consulted. Republicans baked into this fake CR huge amounts of evil, shrinking the power of Congress, creating slush funds for Trump and Musk and giving them unprecedented powers to cripple the government. Relishing the prospect of a shutdown, they made it as bad as they could.
The question of which is worse is the wrong question, and a quarrel over how Democrats should have voted is the wrong quarrel. This set-up by MAGA extremists was to give Trump and Musk unprecedented power to cripple government, either way. That’s where the harm is, and that’s where the blame is.
The evil was in setting up that unprecedented executive power grab. Whether Democrats voted for a shutdown that aggrandized Trump’s power, sending the Trump-addled economy into a deeper pit with no off-ramp in sight; or whether Democrats voted to pass a so-called CR that lets Trump and Musk cripple government and removes Congress from the equation; either way, the harm is done by Trump’s Republicans.
Every member of our caucus after serious reflection arrived conscientiously at the conclusion they believed was in the best interest of the country and their state. Either way, we are left with an increasingly maniacal and out-of-control executive commanding a supine Republican-controlled Congress so petrified that they instantly and automatically surrender their constitutional power.
Let’s remember, if only three House Republicans stood up, the madness could end. If only four Senate Republicans stood up, the madness could end. We were extremely close to a short-term real CR, that would lead to regular bipartisan appropriations, and a return to bipartisan regular order. It was the Republicans’ choice to shut that down and present us the false-choice power grab. Fighting among Democrats about that is misguided and wrong. We will only succeed if we stay together against the MAGA Republican power play — a power play out to destroy much of our government to give political power and huge tax breaks to billionaires. Every moment we spend distracted from that real danger is wasted.
America is in an emergency. Democrats are fighting hard from the minority, and there will be times when Republicans force bad alternatives upon us. The only way we will get out of this is to hang together with persistent and relentless focus on the real danger we are facing.
