Can Democrats Make Complete Powerlessness Work For Them?

Will House Republicans actually pass a budget?

It might seem as if the GOP-controlled Congress has willingly surrendered its constitutional authority and duties to Elon Musk, but Congress is still on the hook for passing an actual budget. The Senate is rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s unqualified, extremist nominees, and the House has looked the other way while President un-elect Musk illegally dissolves federal agencies. However, the GOP isn’t using its ample free time to avoid another costly government shutdown.

We obviously don’t exist in normal times, but it’s still worthwhile to note that despite boasting a trifecta, no matter how narrow, Trump hasn’t made any real progress advancing a genuine legislative agenda. He’s a Republican, of course, so that agenda is primarily tax cuts for billionaires and increased border spending. It’s not that complex, so you’d think they could’ve come up with something by now.

Four years ago, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats negotiated and passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, within two months of Biden’s inauguration. Biden and Congress also made serious headway in those early weeks on the bipartisan infrastructure law, which he signed into law later in 2021.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans currently struggle to achieve the bare minimum — passing a budget before the March 14 deadline and avoiding a catastrophic default.

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Speaker Mike Johnson, copping Trump’s verbiage, told caucus members late last month at Trump’s Doral resort that he wants “one big, beautiful bill” instead of multiple, separate ones. The speaker talked a big game about hitting the ground running, but it took Republicans on the House Budget Committee until last Thursday to just come up with a blueprint that predictably gives to the rich and screws the poor like a non-woke Robin Hood.

Democrats still might have to swoop in and save the nation from GOP incompetence, again. The question now is what they should demand in return.

Long and winding budget road

While House Republicans were spinning their wheels, Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham announced early this month that the Senate wouldn’t wait around and that his committee was moving forward with its own budget resolution.

Graham said the Senate was eying “around $150 billion for border security” and “somewhere in that range” to expand military spending, for a total of $350 billion on the first bill. That would leave Trump’s tax cut giveaway, which are set to expire at the end of this year, for another day.

Johnson, still favoring the one bill approach, told reporters, “I’m going to talk to Lindsey, he’s a good friend … the House needs to lead this if we’re going to have success.”

But there’s no evidence a MAGA-controlled House could lead ants to a picnic. Johnson and company missed a soft deadline a couple weeks ago to show progress toward one “big, beautiful bill,” and the Senate could still seize control of the process. (Don’t get too excited by that prospect, as the Senate budget is also cursed.)

Not surprisingly, Trump hasn’t been that helpful during negotiations. He’s just demanded congressional Republicans “get it done” but hasn’t offered any real strategy. When he’s been asked if he prefers one bill or two, Trump has barely been able to conceal his disinterest in the normal legislative process. If he had it his way, he would rule as a dictator and only involve lawmakers as a rubber stamp to validate his brilliance.

To the extent Trump has an actual legislative agenda, his priorities are a grab bag of stuff he said at one time or another during his campaign. His desired tax cuts and increased border spending would add an estimated $10 trillion to the federal budget deficit. In addition to renewing his 2017 tax cuts, he’d like to deliver on his promises to remove taxes on tips, Social Security, and overtime wages. The problem is that massive cuts to government programs, including healthcare and food assistance, wouldn’t come close to paying for what Trump wants to do but will obviously create big political problems for Republicans.

Recent Republican speakers have had to pacify the far-right hardliners from the House Freedom Caucus, and this remains a problem for Johnson. Chip Roy, who sits on the House Budget Committee, has repeatedly attacked what he describes as the “reckless spending” of Trump’s agenda. The House Freedom Caucus and Trump are seemingly aligned on slashing spending related to policies Trump hates — for instance, repealing Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, drastically reducing IRS funding, and eliminating benefits for illegal immigrants. However, Trump doesn’t share the hardliners’ obsession with supposed “fiscal responsibility.”

Roy openly opposed Trump’s demand last December that Congress raise the debt ceiling before he took office (and thus shoulder Democrats with the blame). In November, two House Freedom Caucus members, Bob Good and Andy Harris, killed a bill Johnson himself co-sponsored that would’ve expanded certain Social Security benefits for retired public employees.

Republicans currently hold just 218 seats, which gives Johnson basically zero breathing room to pass legislation. Roy could sink a deal pretty much on his own, and Rep. Tim Burchett is another possible “no.” He wasn’t invited to Trump’s big agenda meeting at the White House, which Burchett says was “stupid.” The snub could have lasting repercussions, considering that Burchett voted to oust Kevin McCarthy after claiming the former speaker personally offended him.

Johnson is right that the House needs to lead this effort. The House must initiate the reconciliation process, through which Republicans can bypass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. However, Johnson’s fooling himself if he thinks the Republican majority can pass a budget without any Democratic support, which he’s unlikely to receive without meaningful concessions concessions.

Will Democrats come to the rescue?

One upside of being in the minority for Democrats is that they can force Republicans to fend for themselves regarding the debt ceiling or any budget negotiations with the White House. And the fact Republicans are unable to fend for themselves presents Democrats with a big opportunity.

Democrats helped the GOP’s shambolic majority pass budget deals in 2023 and 2024. They aren’t legislative nihilists like the GOP extremists, but they also had more to lose politically from failure because there was a Democratic president. No matter how much Trump lies, it will be hard to convince voters that Democrats are responsible for a fully GOP-controlled Congress’s inability to pass a budget.

The national debt has already hit its legal limit of $31.4 trillion, which means the government can’t borrow more money to pay for spending Congress already approved. If Congress doesn’t lift or suspend the cap, the government would have to stop borrowing funds in the spring and default on its debts. This would likely crash the US economy and result in a global crisis. This has become an unfortunately familiar standoff whenever the debt limit is reached.

This time, however, Democrats aren’t as willing to bail out Republicans. Sen. Patty Murray, who’s vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Punchbowl News: “Democrats are, as always, committed to responsibly funding the government, but it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement on toplines — much less full-year spending bills — when the president is illegally blocking vast chunks of approved funding, when he is trying to unilaterally shutter critical agencies, and when an unelected billionaire is empowered to force his way into our government’s central, highly-sensitive payments system [at the Treasury Department]. Democrats and Republicans alike must be able to trust that when a deal gets signed into law, it will be followed.”

Sen. Andy Kim made a similar point on Meet the Press, saying “I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing when it comes to this administration’s actions. And for us to be able to support government funding, only for them to turn around and dismantle the government, that is not something that should be allowed.”

Kim has reminded reporters about basic math in later interviews, stressing that if the government shuts down, it’s entirely on Republicans, not Democrats. (Watch below.)

While Democrats like Murray and Kim are talking publicly about not voting to fund the government until the Trump administration stops flouting the law, it remains to be seen whether the party can stay united. It’s worth keeping in mind that even a few Democrats votes in the House would be enough to provide Johnson with what he needs.

Usually only Republicans have played Russian roulette with the nation’s full faith and credit, and Dems have consistently vote to extend the debt limit even during Republican administrations. However, Republicans prefer to take the economy hostage and extract a large ransom of budget or even policy concessions that would never otherwise pass.

This goes back 30 years when House Speaker Newt Gingrich threatened to send the United States into default unless President Bill Clinton submitted to his budget demands. This led to a five-day government shutdown, followed by an even more costly 21-day shutdown at the end of 1995. Gingrich’s blackmail attempt failed, as Americans blamed congressional Republicans for the mess and Clinton was easily reelected the next year.

During the Obama administration, the GOP-controlled House tried to use the debt ceiling as leverage to defund the Affordable Care Act. House Speaker John Boehner announced at a September 2013 press conference that President Barack Obama would have to “negotiate” extending the debt limit.

“Negotiating” raising the debt ceiling suggests that either party could walk away, when in fact Congress was driving toward a cliff and Republicans were threatening to cut the brakes. Republicans believed that Democrats would either blink or take the blame for not accepting concessions.

Now, although Republicans control the White House and Congress, an increasingly desperate Johnson has already started pointing fingers at Democrats for this mess of his own making, accusing them of refusing to work in a bipartisan manner to pass a clearly Trump-centric budget.

“Leader Jeffries and others seem to be trying to set up some sort of government shutdown,” Johnson shamelessly stated. “We were negotiating in good faith and trying to get the top-line number, but so far as I know, they’ve been sort of unresponsive the last two days or so. So I hope we can get back to it.”

Hakeem Jeffries rightly dismissed Johnson’s remarks as “projection.” Rep. Jim McGovern, ranking member of the House Rules Committee, went even further. “First of all, he’s full of shit. He’s a liar. And he’s a total shill for Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

“So he can blame anybody he wants … but we’re not walking away from the table,” McGovern added. “They’re not interested in hearing from us at this particular point. Maybe they will be in March.”

While Republicans have held the debt ceiling hostage to force its own partisan agenda, Democrats are considering extreme measures, including a shutdown, because it’s perhaps the best leverage they have to force Republicans to get right with the law.

Trump has given Musk wide latitude to “go into” every federal department and agency as part of his unsanctioned mission to slash any spending he doesn’t like. As long as this continues, Democrats feel as if any deal they make with Trump and the GOP is meaningless.

As Sen. Chris Murphy told Semafor, “What’s the point of writing a budget if the president’s going to ignore it?”

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took some heat when he said, What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it's their government.” However, this isn’t necessarily defeatist so much as a smart strategy to distance Democrats from a resulting Republican catastrophe. (Watch below.)

Trump’s lawlessness and general untrustworthiness are reason enough for Democrats to avoid making any deal with Republicans. Democrats will need to steel themselves from their natural instinct to act in the public’s best interest if they’re serious about watching Republicans drive the car off the cliff. But at this point, Americans might need to learn a hard lesson about how the government operates when MAGA extremists have all the power.