It wasn't long ago when the party anxious to avoid piling on more debt (Republicans) would capitulate to additional spending when shutdowns loomed. Democrats ran an extortion racket: acquiesce to more spending or we’ll close the government and blame Republicans. 2025 began with DOGE slashing government spending. Democrats then rushed to the courts seeking injunctions. That was then. With their government shutdown push, Democrats just ran a bus over their base. Because you-know-who resides rent-free in their heads, they’ve concluded a government shutdown sounds great.
Because Republicans cut funding to the Democrats’ favorite programs, Democrats’ brain trust now grants OMB Director Russ Vought unlimited rescission authority. Their specious logic goes like this: if Democrats support a shutdown because Republicans support insufficient spending, voters will blame Republicans for the ensuing shutdown. Yet it’s not Republicans supporting the shutdown.
It’s unclear whether Democrats managed to self-destruct on their own or were into it. The party of Really Big Government handed the administration a blank check for wholesale layoffs. Maybe Democrats believe a shutdown will encourage voters to rise up and demand restoring positions. Maybe they’re just insane. Nobody will notice or care if hundreds of thousands of surplus federal workers are fired, except the workers.
Democrats might want to rethink this one. The ones being hurt the most are their fellow travelers, foot soldiers comprising the ranks of overpaid and underworked federal bureaucrats. Shutdowns normally conclude with furloughed government employees receiving vacations, then receiving full back pay after the charade concludes. Except this time, workers . Have Democrats considered the loss of campaign contributions from federal workers and their unions?
Republican presidents have long dreamed of a constitutional amendment granting them unlimited line-item veto authority. Christmas arrived early for Trump this year. The areas targeted for the largest cuts include healthcare, education, science, and social services. Defense (War), immigration enforcement, and law enforcement workers are safe. The federal government is being reformulated away from touchy-feely objectives, with an emphasis on restoring its original primary mission to ensure public safety. It’s not all cuts. Thanks to the OBBB, ICE is adding 10,000 agents.
Education faces approximately $5 billion in additional cuts; HHS is slated for $33 billion (about 26%); NSF faces a 56% cut, with HUD scheduled for a 43% cut. Labor faces a 35% cut, and over $10 billion more is slated to be drained from foreign aid and public broadcasting. Imagine the horror: platoons of overpaid NPR and PBS executives forced to take pay cuts or pink slips. Woke corporations might need to advertise to woke listeners and viewers.
By September 30, over 350,000 workers had left the federal workforce from an initial 2.4 million total, almost a 15% reduction. The biggest cuts were made to the War Department, 55,000. The second biggest was Treasury, down 33,000, mostly from the IRS. Agriculture cut 21,000 and HHS cut 20,000. A shutdown provides the administration a clean way to permanently eliminate hundreds of thousands more jobs. Litigation and costly buyouts are avoided.
Critics complain that the administration’s planned cuts bypass Congress. Precisely. The Number One impediment to wholesale reform is Congress. Number Two is the judiciary. A government shutdown removes the ability of both branches to obstruct executive branch spending determinations. Democrats just defenestrated two government branches, then empowered the executive.
Shutdowns eventually conclude. The longer that date gets postponed, the more bureaucrats who will be signing up to learn to code. Democrats are running out of factions in their base to antagonize. Legal citizens, males, Whites, Christians, Jews, cisgenders, female athletes, the law-abiding, and now bureaucrats have been systematically run over by the bus. The party’s remaining minority females, criminals, and transgenders don’t yield a winning coalition.
Today’s Democrats call to mind German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, famous for his post-Nazism confession: “When they came for the socialists, I did not speak out because I wasn’t a socialist…” This can be updated for federal bureaucrats: “When they came for the males, I did not speak... Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.” But Democrats are speaking out. Their problem is that they’re speaking out for illegals, criminals, Hamas, and Antifa, elevating these creeps to cultural icons.Democrats are cruising on autopilot. Since shutdowns began under Reagan, they learned that threatening shutdowns yields spending increases. Until 2025. They have two options: support or oppose spending reductions. Because they’re hardwired for the latter, they’re constitutionally unable to consider anything else, regardless of the consequences. Spending über alles.
Senator John Kennedy concluded that Democrats’ shutdown antics provide “that much more evidence that human evolution is a slow, slow process. I thought humans had advanced more as a species, but apparently we haven’t.” Trump has dialed his trolling up to 11, with backup from MAGA forces. The White House assembled a highlights reel of Democrats decrying shutdowns. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Bedlam): “If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer the most.” There might be a sliver of truth in Schumer’s statement, but Democrats’ problem is they’re the ones creating chaos. The shutdown’s impact is mostly confined to hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly leftist bureaucrats.
We’ve seen this movie before. TDS victims such as Hillary, Mitt, or Kamala never recover their bearings. They wallow in self-pity, seeking others to blame. The infection has spread throughout Democrats’ ranks. Kaitlan Collins tried, but failed, to trip up House Speaker Mike Johnson over the Schumer Shutdown. Johnson noted that Democrats oppose the same funding they voted for in March. Polling shows 2.4 times as many voters oppose Democrats’ refusal to fund the government as those who approve.
Gaza parallels are obvious. Hamas leaders, wallowing in luxury abroad, sacrifice their population on anti-Zionism’s altar. Democrats routinely sacrifice their constituencies. They also aren’t allowing their shutdown to go to waste. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee scheduled an October 13-14 retreat at the five-star Estate Yountville in Napa Valley. Rooms start at $700 nightly. Organic wine, hot tubs, massages, and spa treatments are extra. The event features vineyard and wine cave tours before dinner at the exclusive Staglin Family Vineyard.
Feel free to draw the Marie Antoinette analogy. The retreat also includes a crypto roundtable. Maybe Democrats’ $40 million donor Sam Bankman-Fried can phone it in. His schedule remains free for 24 years. Trump is unconcernedabout the shutdown: “I don’t worry about that because people that are smart see what’s happening. The Democrats are deranged.”