Republicans have found themselves in an unusual position during the past week: having the unquestionable upper hand in a government-funding fight.
They could be squandering it.
A string of missteps has provided Democrats a boost in the back-and-forth battle over who would be responsible for a shutdown if federal agencies run out of money in seven days.
President Donald Trump Tuesday abruptly canceled a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, giving Democrats an opening to paint him as indifferent to finding the votes he needs to keep the government open.
House Democrats also are jumping on Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to keep the House on recess beyond the start of a shutdown as proof that the GOP isn’t taking the crisis seriously.
Now let’s be clear: The facts surrounding this debate haven’t changed.
Hill Republicans and the White House want to pass a clean bill to fund the government until Nov. 21. The House passed the measure on a near party-line vote, but Senate Democrats blocked it.
Schumer and Jeffries have offered their own Oct. 31 CR that calls for permanent extension of Obamacare subsides, rolls back the huge Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill — Trump’s signature legislative win — and restricts the White House’s ability to rescind funding.
In short, Democrats have a set of audacious asks.
Instead of giving appropriators another seven weeks to make progress on the FY2026 spending bills, Democrats are instigating a fight now. And they have the power to do it, since Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate and the GOP is well short of that threshold.
Democrats have the political incentive to push hard. Since Schumer kept the government open in March in the name of stopping the White House from enacting harmful policies, Trump has pushed a rescissions bill, enacted pocket rescissions and impounded money appropriated by Congress. Republicans knew Democrats were fed up and eager for a fight, yet GOP leaders didn’t truly engage minority leadership on how to keep the government open, suggesting they should simply vote for a clean CR.
With Trump canceling Thursday’s meeting, Democrats now have the ability to say that the president is having a “tantrum,” and simply acting as an angry child, as Schumer put it.
“By refusing to even sit down with Democrats, Donald Trump is causing the shutdown. This is a Donald Trump shutdown,” Schumer said Tuesday during a stop in Brooklyn. “Stop ranting, stop these long diatribes that mean nothing to anyone. Get people in a room, and let’s hammer out a deal.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), in line to be the next Democratic whip, said Trump’s about-face is “a pretty serious blunder” that “illustrates that Donald Trump doesn’t know how to avoid a shutdown because he thinks he’s a monarch.”
In a letter to his Democratic colleagues, Jeffries said Trump “chickened out.” Jeffries also tweeted the “Trump Always Chickens Out,” or TACO line used by the president’s critics, something Trump has shown he doesn’t like.
Here’s more from Jeffries:
Equally revealing, House Republicans have made the stunning decision to cancel votes on Monday and Tuesday of next week, notwithstanding the fact that funding to keep the government open expires at midnight on September 30. This is the height of irresponsibility and further evidence that Republicans are determined to shut the government down.
How Republicans view the situation. Johnson doesn’t want Republicans back in Washington next week with nothing to do. The House Republican leadership feels as if they’ve already done their job by passing a CR. Calling members back is a concession they have more work to do, GOP sources said.
Furthermore, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune weren’t hot on a Trump-Schumer-Jeffries meeting. Top Hill Republicans believe that Democratic leaders have boxed themselves in and don’t deserve an audience with the president.
In Johnson and Thune’s view, there’s nothing to negotiate. Schumer and Jeffries need to take the clean CR.
There’s also a belief within the Senate GOP leadership that they need to replicate the March CR process as much as possible in order to set Schumer up for a re-run in which he folds and feels the heat from the Democratic base. A Trump meeting didn’t happen during that showdown.
Yet folding here isn’t really an option for Schumer or Jeffries. It would be disastrous internal and external politics with very little upside for them or the party.
The politics. It’s true that Republicans are vulnerable here. The longer this impasse continues, the more Democrats will be able to remind the public that health care premiums will skyrocket for millions of Americans at the end of the year absent some congressional action on Obamacare subsidies.
And there are plenty of politically vulnerable Republicans who believe that allowing the enhanced Obamacare subsidies to expire means they’ll be at greater risk of losing their seats.
Furthermore, a new Washington Post/Ipsos poll had troubling numbers for congressional Republicans, showing that Americans want to elect a Democratic-run Congress as a check on Trump.
They can do it.
