Welcome to the Schumer Shutdown! Bill Murray put it best in Groundhog Day. To paraphrase:
Once again, the eyes of the nation have turned here to this… tiny swamp on the Potomac. Blah, blah, blah, blah! There is no way that this budget stunt is *ever* going to end as long as this demagogue keeps seeing his face on TV.
A week ago, I wondered whether Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries were idiots. Perhaps I was a touch too generous. We have had government shutdowns in the past, usually (and perhaps even exclusively) created by Republicans. The GOP miscalculated in each instance, convinced that the unpopularity of bureaucrats and the support for trimming government would rally voters to their side. It inevitably failed every time, as voters may not like government — but they hate chaos and uncertainty, especially when deliberately created as a consequence of derailing a mundane task like budgeting.
But at least Republicans had the small virtue of consistency. The GOP opposes big government. So why are Democrats — who want to federalize everything — shutting down government?
This is akin to Groundhog Day, only with Punxsutawney Phil taking over the weatherman duties.
What are the stakes involved? The Washington Post reports that Schumer and Jeffries nominally want a trillion dollars in previous cuts restored, plus extensions of ObamaCare subsidies. What they actually want is a phallus-measuring contest with Donald Trump — or more accurately, that’s what their radical-activist base wants:
The Democratic strategy to lean into the shutdown is not without considerable risks. No one knows how long a shutdown will last, or which political party would ultimately shoulder the blame for a break in government programs. The Trump administration has threatened to fire even more federal workers, which could hurt Democrats’ policy goals. And the position is a break with past Democratic arguments that permitting a shutdown is practicing irresponsible politics.
“They got their base breathing down their neck about standing up to Trump,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). Graham said he knows “how this movie ends,” having lived through a 2018 GOP-spurred shutdown where his party hoped voters would rally around their demand for a border wall. “This will be a gigantic flop.”
And not just a gigantic flop with voters. This actually gives Republicans the opportunity to do what they actually wanted from the previous shutdowns — a lever to enact massive permanent cuts to the federal bureaucracy, or at least to clean out its current inhabitants. Russ Vought already has plans to fire federal workers rather than furlough them. Even if those positions reopen, Trump and his political appointees will choose who to hire when they do. It will bypass the civil-service system, at least while the courts try to unwind the entire mess — and that could take years. In the meantime, that will add more leverage to Republicans in upcoming budget negotiations.
And the real kicker? None of this would have mattered in the short run, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune points out:
Republicans are flabbergasted by the Democratic position. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) have offered a relatively straightforward continuing resolution funding the government for the next seven weeks that also includes more money for lawmakers’ safety following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Notably, Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiating an extension of the ACA subsidies after the government is funded.
“That doesn’t happen until the end of the year,” Thune said, referencing the subsidies expiring in December. “We can have that conversation. But before we do, release the hostage. Set the American people free. Keep the government open.”
If they don’t, the impact could be … yuuuuge:
Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief, asked agencies last week to submit plans laying out how they would scale back services during a shutdown. An analysis of those plans by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed.
The shutdown will slow or halt government functions across agencies. The Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department won’t investigate claims of discrimination in schools. The CDC won’t offer guidance to states about opioid overdoses and diabetes or HIV prevention.
All but one employee in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is tasked with collecting jobs data, will be furloughed. The National Institutes of Health won’t meet to do peer-review research, nor will it admit new patients at its clinical center.
The WSJ notes one particular plan that won’t make a key Democrat constituency happy at all:
Though nearly 85% of the Office of Federal Student Aid will be furloughed, collections on student debt will proceed, as those contracts and staffing are “prefunded,” according to agency plans.
When the opposition imposes a budget impasse, they hand the keys to the kingdom to the president. When their constituents start feeling the impact of the shutdown, Republicans will remind them that Schumer had a clean CR on the floor to avoid all of this while negotiations continued — the kind of clean CR Democrats demanded from Republicans in every earlier budget standoff.
At some point, Schumer will see his shadow. The question will be whether it’s in time for the storm to blow out the levees protecting the Swamp.
Update: Vought has fired the first volley, and it has landed in Schumer’s backyard:
Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles. More info to come soon from @USDOT.
— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 1, 2025
BREAKING NEWS: @russvought is freezing infrastructure funding to New York City on day one of the shutdown. https://t.co/Nn4vnWAtBZ
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 1, 2025
More to come, I’m certain.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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