The possibly imminent government closure would be like no federal funding crisis before it.
The force test before a deadline on Tuesday evening is much more than the classic quarrel over how the government spends its money, and if a white house or its enemies Capitol Hill will prevail in a political testing test.
The confrontation between President Donald Trump and the Congress Democrats comes in the context of the most aggressive attempt of a president to impose unhindered power in modern times.
Thus, the closure break will take a broader story to find out if an endemic president can be slowed down or stopped on any problem.
Only in recent days:
► Trump ordered troops in Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration application operations, wrongly declaring that the city is a war zone after dispersed demonstrations.
► This follows his dismantling of the independence of the Ministry of Justice after a newly installed prosecutor acted on his requests to invoice the former director of the FBI James Comey.
► Trump also plans this week to attend a rally of better military brass at home at great expense during a mass meeting that raises the greatest politicization of the armed forces.
► And the president intensifies his assault against science because he leads the attack on health and social services at home, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
► Trump also asks the Supreme Court to overthrow the right to citizenship of the dawn, which has been established in law for generations and whose loss could trigger chaos and uncertainty for thousands of American Americans.
This hard power rush follows eight months in which Trump has constantly tested the Constitution and the Law. This context of a hastily aggressive president explains why each discreet political battle – including the closure saga – becomes something more critical than the sum of his parts.
Why Trump thinks he has the upper hand
Unless the Congress is a temporary financing agreement on Tuesday evening, large expanses of the federal machine will stop. Thousands of workers could be conticulated. Those who are essential for the management of the country will work without salary.
Government closings have become more common in the past 30 years, during close elections; Small majorities of the Gerrymandesses Congress; And the government divided in Washington.
But everything in the Trump era is intimate.
Trump’s requests for Democrats to offer sufficient votes to the Senate to keep the government open, it is only a first in its growing battle for political omnipotence, which intensified 13 months before the mid-term elections.
Events in the coming days will show if his campaign to silence the whole opposition can be slowed on a front by democrats, using their only lever effect in Washington – the Senate filibusier which requires 60 votes for major legislation.
Given Trump’s threat to summarily dismiss thousands of bureaucrats to punish the Democrats if they trigger a closure, the coming days will be particularly scary for people affected by an administration ready to impose human pain.
Normally, a government closure is risky for the presidents – although history shows that the parts of Capitol Hill which trigger the dead end often end up disintegrating. A closure can cost the billions economy and create anger and frustration against Washington at a time when voters are conditioned to punish operators.
But Trump has scrambled political logic and seems to worry more about the application of his own power now than from any long -term political repercussions. He heads for the week showing no intention to offer a compromise with the Democrats. He must meet the two main democrats in the Chamber and Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer on Monday as well as the Republican leaders who run the two chambers. But the case looks more like a professional attempt to spell an uncompromising position than a negotiation session.
“Chuck Schumer returned with a long list of laundry for partisan requests that do not get into this process, and he will try to close the government,” the Republican president of the Mike Johnson said on Sunday. “The president wants to talk about it and say:” Please don’t do that. “”
Given the president’s domination in Washington and a flexible republican party that lines up behind him, it is worth wondering if the Democrats can draw very politically from a closure. Rather, they may find themselves in an even worse position.
The head of the Democrat minority of the Senate, Schumer, said on Sunday that if Trump was ready to negotiate, a closure can be avoided. “If the president of this meeting will complain, and just cry to the Democrats, and speak of all his alleged grievances, and say that, and the other thing, we will have nothing.
Democrats have a losing hand but may have to fight anyway
The complex psychology of the closures is based on each party believing that it has the ability to inflict the pain that the other will find so unbearable that it will have no choice but to concede.
But it is difficult to see in the case of Trump how such a scenario would take place. Democrats could trigger a government closure, but may have trouble imposing sufficient pressure to force Trump in any type of compromise. They might suspect that the threat of the management and budget office to reject thousands of federal workers that he deems useless is a bluff or that he would end up being reversed before the courts. But Trump and Hardliners from the OMB office asked for such a opening for months.
A potential risk for the president is that a closure could create new disruptions for an economy already disputed by his attempts to empty the independence of the federal reserve and by the pricing policies of the Trump prices. For all the resilience of the economy, a long -term stop that affects growth could further anger voters who thought Trump would make their lives less expensive and safer.
And while Trump’s Maga fans wanted disturbances, there is an increasing meaning – fueled by his assault against health care councils, his attempts to continue his enemies and his strong buffoons – that chaos that marked his first mandate and contributed to his loss of 2020 starts to come together.
But political choices are more treacherous for Democrats.
They fight asymmetrical war. If the government is a hostage in the current financing battle, Trump may not worry about what he is going alive.
But there is a reason why Democrats cannot just let this lever moment pass, even if possible. Their supporters are desperate for the party to put a line in the sand. Liberal liberals want to fight back, finally seeking to trigger a renewal following the defeat of former vice-president Kamala Harris against Trump last November.
Sometimes it is good for a party to choose a fight that he suspects that he can lose to rally his supporters and offer a definition to a cause. In this case, Democrats demand that Trump accept the extension of the subsidies of the Act respecting affordable care that will expire this year, which would result in an increase in insurance premiums. The government’s closure on this issue would focus on republican policies that Democrats seriously support Medicaid. This would give them a jump on a message that they hope to shape the middle of next year.
“God prohibits Republicans from closing the government,” said Schumer on NBC. “The American people will know that it is on their backs. First, they are in charge. They have the room, they have the Senate, they have the presidency, so they know that they are in charge.” He continued: “Second, everyone knows that you need bipartite negotiations to do it.
The Republicans understand that if such an argument settles, it could be damaging. The head of the Senate republican majority, John Thune, for example, told NBC on Sunday that Democrats should cooperate to extend short -term funding in order to allow a period of negotiations on articles such as Obamacare subsidies before the end of the year.
“We can have this conversation. But before doing so, release the hostage. Release the American people. Keep the government open,” said Thune.
It is unlikely that Democrats will take such a offer from its nominal value, because confidence has been fractured on Capitol Hill by Trump’s efforts to cancel the funding of the party priorities already approved by previous iterations in the Congress.
However, lacking in decisive leverage, the question remains: is this the most intelligent moment for the Democrats to have this fight, given a political game which is balanced against them?
If they do not fight, they will seem weak to their supporters and will only invite more intimidation of Trump. But are political conditions different now in March, when the Democrats of the Senate promised their supporters a fight and then yielded? Capitulation only illustrated the party peak.
Having again would be a bad look when the first Trump resistance advice emerged nationally. Democrats in California have mobilized in order to match his catch for additional house seats in Texas with a redistribution plan in the middle of the cycle. The Illinois Democratic Gouv. JB take the difficult speech seemed to postpone Trump’s plan to send federal troops to Chicago in an extension of his repression against crime. The sending of troops to Portland was launched by the city’s attempts to frustrate the Trump mass expulsion campaign.
Comey, in a video according to his accusation act, warned: “We will not live on knees”, while he positioned himself as a rallying point for those who oppose Trump. And last week, ABC’s affiliates bowed to the anger of customers and economic realities when they restored Jimmy Kimmel’s late evening, that the administration had tried to force the air.
In such an atmosphere, a new democratic surrender on Capitol Hill would invite to make fun. But that does not change a political battlefield that promotes Trump.
