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WASHINGTON – Democrats are showing unity and refusing to swerve in their game of chicken with President Donald Trump as the government speeds toward a partial shutdown next week.
In statements and interviews, Democrats repeatedly described the Trump administration’s threat of mass firings in the event of a shutdown as more befitting a criminal syndicate than the federal government, suggesting they wouldn’t back down in the spending fight.
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“President Trump is engaged in mafia-style blackmail, with his threats ultimately harming the American people,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Thursday.
On Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget advised federal agencies to seek permanent layoffs if federal funding lapses next Wednesday, especially for workers in programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
Normally, federal employees are placed on furlough during a government shutdown, meaning they return to work once Congress reaches a deal. The unprecedented threat raises the stakes for the economy and thousands of federal workers, many of whom could lose their livelihoods if Trump follows through with his threat.
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Trump has already pushed out tens of thousands of federal workers, though some firings have been deemed illegal, and hundreds of workers have been asked to come back.
So far, rank-and-file Democrats seem to be taking cues from their leaders, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who immediately condemned OMB director Russell Vought’s mass firing memo on Wednesday.
“Listen Russ, you are a malignant political hack,” Jeffries said online Wednesday evening. “We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost.”
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Government funding is set to expire on Tuesday at midnight, unless Congress takes action. The House of Representatives isn’t scheduled to return until Wednesday, putting pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a previously approved House bill that would keep the government running at current spending levels until November.
Democratic senators have demanded that health care provisions be included in the bill, including an extension of expanded tax credits for people who receive their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, which are due to expire at the end of the year. Still, Republicans have called that an unreasonable demand and something that shouldn’t be tied to government funding.
“Democrats are being completely crazy,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) told reporters Thursday.
The Ohio Republican and top Trump ally said a shutdown would not necessarily result in mass firings right away, though Vought’s memo suggests the layoffs should proceed immediately.
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“What we don’t know is how long this is going to last. So if it starts to last too long, then we’re going to have to make permanent cuts,” Moreno said.
Bobby Kogan, who served in the OMB under Joe Biden and is now at the liberal Center for American Progress, said the fact that the Trump administration, at Vought’s urging, had unilaterally moved to cancel billions in congressionally mandated spending made this shutdown standoff fundamentally different from past ones. (The Government Accountability Office and a federal judge have deemed the so-called pocket rescission illegal.)
“They are completely dedicated to breaking the spending deal that they’re coming to. And that’s what’s so unique about this shutdown,” Kogan told HuffPost. He described the threat to fire federal workers as extortionary — but also as something the administration would do regardless of what Congress says.
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“If they wanted to fire the people, they would do it anyway,” Kogan said.
Members of Congress who represent districts in the D.C. suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, where many federal employees live, told HuffPost they were backing their leadership’s position.
“This is the only lever which we can have a line in the sand,” freshman Rep. April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), whose district includes 35,000 federal workers, said in an interview, referring to the fact that government funding is one of the only areas where Democrats have leverage on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in a statement that the threat of mass firings was already on the table.
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“Thousands of federal workers were facing the threat of imminent layoffs coming into this week, and that will be true next week regardless of whether there is a shutdown,” Beyer said. “The Trump administration is clearly hoping to manipulate federal workers and the public into blaming others for the mass firings they are carrying out, but nobody should be fooled.”
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“His lawyers should tell him that a shutdown gives the administration no additional legal authority to justify the lawless dismissal of federal workers,” Raskin said, adding that Democrats “won’t be intimidated” into supporting a Republican funding bill that doesn’t address their demands.