OPINION:
Senate Democrats voted for the 12th time Monday to keep the government closed. Now in its third week, the shutdown is denying paychecks to indispensable federal employees, most of whom are registered Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer doesn’t care. He knows that if he does anything sensible, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, will capitalize by stealing his Senate seat in the 2028 primary. A Data for Progress poll claims the far-left upstart would clobber the 74-year-old incumbent by 19 percentage points.
Mr. Schumer recognizes the urgency of coddling socialist sympathizers in his base, which was why he avoided turning the government’s lights back on last week. He wanted agitators at the Communist Party-sponsored No Kings event over the weekend to have something to complain about.
Senate Democrats even torpedoed the defense appropriations bill, which sailed through committee on a bipartisan, 26-3 vote, because it would have compensated military personnel who report for duty while the government is idle.
If there’s a broader strategy here, it may be that Democrats are sabotaging regular order so Republicans have no choice but to adopt a massive, omnibus end-of-year bill where spendthrifts have the advantage. “It’s going to become harder and harder to actually have a normal appropriations process, which pushes us into a long-term [continuing resolution] mode,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.
The White House is scrambling to limit the damage. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought dug deep into Uncle Sam’s pockets to find enough stray pennies to ensure paychecks flow to critical law enforcement and border agents, for now.
“The people doing essential services are not being paid. … Border Patrol, air traffic control, the military — although we’re fixing that by playing budgetary Twister to find a pot of money that has a purpose so we can pay them. So, it does have an impact on how long this can go without having severe repercussions, and we don’t want air traffic control to just start staying home sick,” the budget chief explained on “The Charlie Kirk Show” last week.
Even before the Capitol Hill standoff began, the staff responsible for preventing jets from crashing into one another worked average shifts of 10 hours a day, six days a week. Thanks to years of neglect, the Federal Aviation Administration lacks qualified personnel to man the towers, and the ones it does have are cranky about the prospect of not receiving their Oct. 28 paychecks.
“They’re working mass overtime, and Democrats aren’t going to pay them,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on “Fox and Friends.” “By the way, this weekend Democrats at the DNC in D.C. had a rooftop party — drinking wine, beer and hard alcohol, partying during a shutdown. … It shows how out-of-touch Democrats truly are.”
The public is starting to notice. A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research apportioned blame for Washington dysfunction relatively evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The difference is within the margin of error, a big victory for Republicans. Liberals have traditionally won the publicity battle in the current scenario.
Most Americans outside the Beltway haven’t felt the effects of the impasse, and even fewer realize what the Democrats’ dispute is about, beyond it being vaguely about health care. Liberals aren’t eager to advertise that their primary objective is restoring Obamacare subsidies for illegal aliens canceled in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July.
That could change the longer this drags on.
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