White House ramps up pressure on Democrats' shutdown strategy

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders are digging in on their demands for keeping the federal government open, even after a startling missive from the White House budget office putting agencies on notice to potentially shutter entire programs and conduct mass firings if a partial shutdown occurs.

Sources on both sides of the aisle and nonpartisan analysts agreed that, beyond the tough talk, top congressional Democrats have a weak hand to play and no discernible strategy for extracting the concessions from President Donald Trump and GOP leaders that they want on health care policy.

“A shutdown for the sake of a shutdown doesn’t help anyone,” a former Democratic congressional aide granted anonymity to speak candidly said. “If there is a shutdown, there also needs to be a plan to get out of it — and it will require a deal on all sides to end it, at a time when tensions would be even higher. It’s hard to turn back to bipartisan negotiations after that.”

David Berteau, a former top Defense Department official who served in four administrations from former presidents Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, said the Office of Management and Budget memo ought to convince Democrats to cave.

“A shutdown under the guidance of this memo will be fundamentally different than any previous shutdown in American history,” said Berteau, who until recently ran the Professional Services Council, a trade group for federal contractors. “Its impacts will be more far-reaching and harder to reverse than ever before.”

Still, that may not be enough to avoid a shutdown starting Oct. 1, given demands from Democrats’ left-leaning base to stand up to Trump no matter the cost. Even Democrats who previously disagreed with party leaders’ strategy are changing their tune after the Wednesday night memo.

“With people like this — who do not give a s—t about federal employees’ fate, their livelihoods and the functions of the federal government — the only way is to shut it down and help the American public pay attention and understand what’s happening with their government and the services provided by it,” another former Democratic aide said.

Publicly, Democratic leaders have been baiting Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought into a shutdown.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Wednesday night called Vought a “malignant political hack” on the social platform X. And he raked Trump over the coals in a news conference Thursday for canceling a meeting with Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer where the three New Yorkers could have worked towards a deal.

“If Donald Trump really believed that he had a strong position here, then why’d you back out of the meeting, bro? Why? I don’t understand,” Jeffries said.

Laying the groundwork

Jeffries, Schumer and other Democrats have been arguing it’s no surprise and nothing new that federal workers’ livelihoods and government services are being threatened.

That’s been happening since Day 1 of the Trump 2.0 administration, both in initial rounds of layoffs orchestrated by the OMB and Department of Government Efficiency and subsequent agency-by-agency reductions in force. Entire agencies have been shuttered already, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development.

There are some legal questions surrounding the new OMB guidance, while court decisions have enjoined the administration from mass layoffs in other cases. And several agencies have had to rehire “RIF’d” workers upon determining their positions were critical.

But Vought nonetheless has “immense” power to determine what functions of government can continue during a shutdown, according to Barry Anderson, a former top White House budget official under administrations of both parties.

“Let’s just say that everything Trump has called ‘woke,’ Mr. Vought has decided is not essential, and what he hasn’t called ‘woke’ is essential,” said Anderson, a career OMB official during the Reagan, George W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

Indeed, according to the OMB memo: programs that got a “mandatory” cash infusion via Republicans’ partisan summer reconciliation package (PL 119-21) will be fine.

That includes things like Pentagon shipbuilding and Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense project; NASA’s mission to the moon and eventually Mars; Coast Guard procurement and air traffic control upgrades; U.S.-Mexico border barriers and building out migrant detention bed capacity.

“Thankfully,” the memo says, the reconciliation law “provided ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted” in a shutdown.

Other politically sensitive activities that aren’t financed by annual appropriations bills, including big-ticket benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, would also be largely unaffected.

On the other hand, under the Civil War-era Antideficiency Act, whenever there is a “lapse in appropriations,” agencies generally need to wind down their operations and furlough staff until the lapse ends, with certain exceptions for roles critical to the “safety of human life or the protection of property.”

‘Extremely arbitrary decision’

Anderson acknowledged the broad discretion the law gives to the administration.

During the 21-day shutdown standoff between President Bill Clinton and the GOP Congress in late 1995-early 1996, Anderson said, Jack Lew, then the deputy OMB director, Anderson, as assistant budget director, and the agency’s general counsel met each day to determine what activities were essential.

The OMB immediately closed the National Zoo, he said, but, naturally, it was deemed essential to keep the guards on duty. A day or two later, officials realized the animals had to be fed, necessitating additional spending.

“This was an extremely arbitrary decision on our part,” Anderson said. “We had to adjust daily.”

Fears that the new administration would make such “arbitrary” decisions on a much larger and more destructive scale have now become real. Even the mere threat of mass firings – the OMB memo itself is careful to simply ask agencies to “consider” such drastic actions – is designed to try to convince Democrats to back down.

Vought and the White House used similar intimidation tactics earlier this year before the March 14 shutdown deadline.

Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 11 dictating that agencies should target for layoffs employees whose functions are “not mandated by statute or other law,” or are not typically “excepted” from furloughs during shutdowns.

On Feb. 26, Vought and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote a memo providing guidance to agencies for carrying out Trump’s order — with instructions to deliver RIF plans by March 13, the day before the stopgap funding deadline.

Berteau surmises that timing was no accident. After the Congressional Research Service summarized the situation for lawmakers in a March 13 report, the next day Schumer led a group of 10 Democratic caucus members in voting for cloture, letting the yearlong CR come to the floor for a final, simple-majority vote (PL 119-4).

“I was convinced then and am still convinced that Schumer or at least his staff could see this coming back then,” Berteau said.

At the time, a conflicted Schumer concluded that a shutdown would be worse than funding the government under a CR that would give Vought and the agencies great flexibility in deciding which programs get money and which don’t.

“In a shutdown, American families would be hurt in ways they almost have never been,” Schumer said on the floor March 14. “The list goes on and on of the severe damage they could do, virtually unchecked.”

‘Remember in November’

Those days appear to be gone, however, with Schumer attacked from the left over his March decision and his caucus not giving him as much breathing room this time.

The OMB directive gave Democrats some ammunition for this November’s gubernatorial election in Virginia – home to more federal workers than any state but California as well as the District of Columbia. That’s after some Democrats have expressed nervousness about a shutdown’s impact on that race, which could be something of a midterm bellwether.

“Attention Virginia. Donald Trump and MAGA extremists are plotting mass firings of federal workers starting October 1,” Jeffries wrote on X late Wednesday. “Remember in November.”

The House on Sept. 19 passed its GOP-drafted “clean” CR running through Nov. 21, after which Senate Democrats blocked it in that chamber while Republicans in turn blocked Democrats’ alternative bill.

Democrats’ version would tack on some $1.5 trillion in new spending, including a permanent, $350 billion extension of expiring tax credits to help pay for health insurance purchased on federal and state exchanges. There’s zero chance Republicans agree, but quiet talks have been underway about at least a scaled-back and temporary renewal of the exchange tax credits, with tighter income limits to qualify.

That’s not enough for Democratic leaders, however, who want a more ironclad “commitment,” in the form of legislation, on the health care tax credits before they let the CR go through on Tuesday.

They aren’t getting support so far from key vulnerable Republicans like Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, who wants a deal to renew the health care subsidies, nonetheless argues keeping the government open is the top priority right now.

“Federal employees dedicate themselves to serving the public, and they should not be treated as pawns amid a needlessly partisan impasse,” Collins said in a statement Thursday.

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David Lerman and John M. Donnelly contributed to this report.

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