Uncle Sam has closed up shop.<\/p>\n
The federal government shut down<\/a> on Wednesday, as Congress failed to extend its annual appropriations. Now, food will go uninspected<\/a>, Superfund sites uncleaned, and IRS helplines unanswered. Millions of Americans will suffer from disrupted government services, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are liable to miss paychecks, and economic growth<\/a> will likely slow.<\/p>\n What explains our government\u2019s latest act of self-sabotage? At first glance, the shutdown seems to be rooted in disputes about health care policy. Republicans back a bill that would maintain existing government funding levels for seven weeks while the two parties negotiate over a broader budget. Democrats, by contrast, say that any new spending bill must extend<\/a> the Affordable Care Act\u2019s enhanced health insurance subsidies \u2014 which are set to expire at year\u2019s end \u2014 and reverse President Donald Trump\u2019s Medicaid cuts.<\/p>\n But the shutdown is not really about health insurance<\/a>. Democrats could have backed the GOP\u2019s seven-week funding extension, while still holding out for their preferred health care policies in negotiations over a long-term budget. Put differently, forcing a shutdown right now was not actually necessary to save the ACA\u2019s enhanced tax credits or reverse Trump\u2019s Medicaid cuts. Yet Democrats chose to embrace procedural hardball, anyway.<\/p>\n In truth, the shutdown was born out of the interaction between three related, big-picture developments in American politics, none of which concern the details of fiscal policy:<\/p>\n Trump is subverting<\/a> constitutional governance. Democratic donors, activists, and highly engaged voters view<\/a> Trump as an authoritarian menace. The Senate\u2019s outdated rules force Democrats to choose between actively abetting right-wing policy or shutting down the government.<\/p>\n The three forces that shuttered the government<\/p>\n To understand how these three developments have conspired to shutter the government, it\u2019s worth briefly examining each in turn.<\/p>\n The most important bit of context for the present crisis is Trump\u2019s creeping authoritarianism. Trump has launched pretextual investigations<\/a> against his enemies, awarded pardons<\/a> and military honors<\/a> to his insurrectionary friends, extorted television networks<\/a> into suppressing critical journalism<\/a> and comedy (with mixed success), deported longtime US residents without due process<\/a>, and vowed to crack down<\/a> on progressive organizations in the name of counter-terrorism.<\/p>\n Perhaps most significantly, Trump has asserted the power to nullify congressionally ordered spending<\/a>, refusing to appropriate $4 billion in legislatively mandated foreign aid. And last week, the Supreme Court\u2019s conservative majority gave this power grab<\/a> its preliminary blessing.<\/p>\n All this has understandably inflamed<\/a> the Democratic base. The party\u2019s donors, activists, and most engaged voters believe their country is slouching toward autocratic rule. And they want their elected representatives to give voice to their alarm for the republic and their contempt for Trump\u2019s GOP. Before the current funding fight, many Democratic voters felt their party was not doing enough to resist Trump<\/a>, deriding it in polls as \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cineffective.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Senate\u2019s rules give the party enough power to choke off federal funding, but too little to achieve much else.<\/p>\n Republicans boast majorities in both chambers of Congress. But in the Senate, the filibuster establishes a 60-vote threshold for the passage of most legislation. As a result, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s 47-seat caucus has the authority to block most bills. But it does not have much standing to dictate terms to Republicans, who feel that voters gave them a mandate for their right-wing agenda.<\/p>\n Put all this together, and you have a recipe for a shutdown.<\/p>\n Senate Democrats are caught between a rock and a mad base<\/p>\n Back in March, Senate Democrats already found it politically painful to help Republicans keep the government\u2019s lights on. After Schumer came out against a shutdown, he faced a fusillade of condemnations<\/a> from liberal organizations and activists.<\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s escalating power grabs since the spring have made the party\u2019s position even more vexing. In particular, his insistence that he can unilaterally withhold spending he doesn\u2019t like \u2014 and the Supreme Court\u2019s recent validation of this position \u2014 has poisoned the budget process. For Democrats, what\u2019s the point of haggling for minor concessions from the GOP majority when the Republican president can nullify them at will? Or, more to the point: How can Democrats sell small budgetary victories to their base, when they can\u2019t even say with certainty that those little wins are real?<\/p>\n