- The government runs out of funding on March 14, and lawmakers are having a hard time making a deal.
- DOGE’s actions in the federal government are contributing to that.
- “This DOGE bullshit has to end,” one House Democrat said.
In a matter of weeks, the United States federal government could shut down for the first time in five years — with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency being a key reason.
Republicans now control the White House, the Senate, and the House. Government funding has historically been a bipartisan affair, with Democrats supplying the majority of votes for every funding bill that passed the GOP-controlled House in the last two years. That’s required both sides to come together on bills that, while not completely satisfactory to either side, are acceptable enough that both parties can tolerate them.
Democrats increasingly say that President Donald Trump’s moves to reshape the federal government without congressional input, including the DOGE-led slashing of USAID and the short-lived federal grant freeze, make it nearly impossible to reach a deal, unless it stops.
“We shouldn’t give them a single damn vote until we have demands met,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told Business Insider. “If they want to pass massive cuts at these agencies, they’re going to have to do it on their own.”
“Things are going to have to change,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told BI. “This DOGE bullshit has to end, and the president has to respect our branch of government.”
It’s not just that Democrats disagree with what Trump and Republicans are doing, which is to be expected. It’s that the Trump administration’s recent moves to circumvent Congress’s spending power have made lawmakers unsure whether any deal they strike amongst themselves will be further tweaked by Trump.
“If this president can say, I refuse to spend money the way it was appropriated, why would any bipartisan group of senators be able to come to and keep an appropriations deal going forward?” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told reporters this week. “I get it, there’s some disagreement about USAID, but the much more fundamental fight is over whether an agreement in appropriations, that is a law, will be respected.”
According to the Nixon-era Impoundment Control Act and subsequent court cases, it’s illegal for a president to simply refuse to spend congressionally approved funds. Trump and his allies have long signaled that they view that law as unconstitutional and will challenge it in the courts.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a letter to colleagues on Monday that Trump’s recent spending moves “must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill,” signaling a bid to use government funding as leverage to get Trump to change course. The following day, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Jeffries had “laid out the foundation for a government shutdown.”
Republicans are generally seen as unable to pass a government funding bill on their own in the House, owing to their extremely slim majority and the existence of a hardline conservative bloc that’s unwilling to pass bills that don’t include extremely steep cuts. Even if that were possible, the Senate’s 60-vote “filibuster” rule means that Democratic cooperation is needed in the upper chamber.
For Republicans, there’s an expectation that Democrats will play ball when it comes to government funding, especially given Johnson’s frequent reliance on Democrats to pass funding bills in the last year or so. That’s true even for the more Trump-skeptical in the GOP.
“There’s no avoiding the cooperation that is required,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told BI, adding that she believes Democrats’ objections to Musk and funding freezes can be kept separate from the government funding fight. “It’s too important. We’ve got to get this done.”
But among Democrats, there’s a sense that their general willingness to fund the government has been taken for granted and that if there is a shutdown, it will be Republicans’ to own.
“It’s up to the Republicans. They’re in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House,” Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin told BI. “So, you know, if Morticia and Cousin Itt and Uncle Fester can all agree on something, then we won’t have a shutdown. My guess is they’re going to have some difficulty.”
If no government funding bill is passed by March 14, the federal government will run out of funding and shut down, aside from some essential functions.
That means federal workers would be at least temporarily out of work, airports would be delayed, national parks would be shuttered, and more.
Politically, shutdowns tend to be painful for the party in power. The last time that the government shut down was in December 2018, when Trump’s demand for billions of dollars in border wall funding was unable to pass Congress. At 35 days, it remains the longest shutdown in American history.
