Keeping Government Open Isn’t Worth Handing Trump All The Power

Republicans in the US House of Representatives are going to try something today they haven’t managed to do since they took control of the chamber in 2022: Pass a bill to fund the government without any help from Democrats. A funding bill called a “continuing resolution” (CR) needs to be passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown starting Saturday morning at 12:01 AM.

Unlike all the previous times when Democrats rescued Republicans for the sake of keeping the government running, the CR that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has on offer is so toxic that no Democrat should support it. So far at least, it looks like no House Dems are planning to.

Here’s why this bill is so awful: While it would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and get more government shutdowns off the table, it would also hand far more discretion over federal spending to Donald Trump, essentially handing over Congress’s power of the purse to a criminal. The hell with that.

Also, just to be super-extra-pissy, the bill would force $1.1 billion in budget cuts on Washington DC, even though the city already passed its own balanced budget for fiscal 2025 back in September, on time, and has been spending and collecting revenue based on that budget for six months. (DC self-funds about 75 percent of its budget, with the rest coming from Congress.) The House CR would force DC to go back to its 2024 budget, which would force layoffs and education cuts. Just a little extra slam against DC for Citying While Black.

For the rest of the country, Johnson’s CR increases Pentagon funding by $6 billion and increases spending for other Trump priorities (like another half-billion for his mass deportation scheme), while chopping $13 billion from safety net programs and other nonmilitary spending like the IRS and National Institutes of Health, giving Republicans the fig leaf of saying it funds the government “at current levels” even though it doesn’t actually do that beyond the top-line total spending total of nearly $1.7 trillion.

Here’s where the entire budget process falls apart, as Politico reported this morning. It almost doesn’t matter what’s in a Republicans-only funding bill, because Trump has already promised the budget-slasher crazies in the House Freedom Caucus that he’ll simply ignore anything in the budget Congress passes that he doesn’t like. That’s why the Freedom cocksplats aren’t raising their usual ruckus over a bill that still contains any domestic spending at all.

Trump and White House officials have been telling GOP holdouts who want more spending cuts that the administration will pursue impoundment — that is, holding back federal funding already appropriated by Congress — according to two Republicans who were in a recent meeting with the president and spoke to Meredith Lee Hill. [emphasis added — Dok Zoom]

That’s a heck of a nice way to achieve Republican unity: Promise the Freedom Crocs that they don’t need to worry about the silly old Constitution, which puts Congress in charge of passing budgets, because Trump will do what they want — or at least what he wants — anyway. No need for “compromise,” that nasty reality of representative democracy for two centuries.

It’s actually looking like House Republicans can pass this thing on their own — so far only Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) is a firm “no,” and Trump has promised to support a primary opponent against him, which could mean someone is walking around today who manages to be actually worse than Thomas Massie.

The CR doesn’t hand Trump excessive power by stating “we hereby give up all Congress’s power and wish Mad King Donald all the best,” but that’s the effect of what the bill doesn’t do:

Spending bills typically come with specific funding directives for key programs, but hundreds of those directives fall away under the legislation, according to a memo released by Senate Democrats. So the administration will have more leeway to reshape priorities.

“President Trump has endorsed this full-year CR because he understands what is in it for him: more power over federal spending to pick winners and losers and devastate Democratic states and priorities,” the memo warned.

Remember when the Republican Party decided not to have a platform, and just said “whatever Trump wants”? Yes, we do too.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said that no matter what Johnson may claim, “This is not a clean CR. This bill is a blank check […] for Elon Musk and President Trump.”

Plus, there’s that whole thing where Trump told the Freedom Caucus he doesn’t intend to actually follow any budget that does get passed.

As we’ve said previously, if this mess does get passed in the House, it’ll need at least eight Democratic votes in the Senate, which is why Senate Dems need to hold firm against it and use the leverage of a potential government shutdown to demand an enforceable deal to rein in Trump’s criminal conduct. Instead of a CR that leaves the decision-making on entire swathes of spending up to Trump, Dems should hold out for a bill that reasserts Congress’s power. End the criming, or no deal.

Senate Dems have already introduced an alternative to the Republican bill, a short-term CR that would extend current funding through April 11, which would allow more time for a better budget compromise that doesn’t just roll over and let Trump be a king. Simply restoring the more typical budget guidance that’s missing in the current bill isn’t enough: There have to be clear constraints that uphold the constitutional order.

Why demand that when Trump has already made clear he’s finished with following the law or the Constitution? Simple: Because one party has to make clear it still does. This is the only place Democrats have any real leverage at all to preserve democracy, and they need to fight the Republican rush to authoritarianism and oligarchy with the only tools they have. That could very well result in a government shutdown, and there’s no telling what deviltry Trump and Musk might get up to with most of the federal government closed.

But hell, we have that already with the government formally in operation.

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[Politico / AP / NYT / NBC News]

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