On the Fast Track Toward a Government Shutdown

Plus: An Epstein files revolt in the House is picking up steam

Russell Vought on December 16, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING THURSDAY, the Senate passed a rescission package—otherwise known as retroactive budgetary takebacks requested by the Trump administration.

The vote accomplishes a few things for Republicans. First, if lawmakers approve the White House’s requested cuts and President Trump signs the bill into law, taxpayers will receive about $9 billion dollars in savings. (The added cost to taxpayers in the form of reduced services is another matter, but one in which the White House is uninterested.¹) Second, it riles the hell out of Democrats, so much so that it now seems likely that not enough of them will join with their GOP colleagues to keep the government open after September 30, the last day covered by the current continuing resolution.

The last time we hit a funding deadline, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of his Democratic colleagues voted to pass the current continuing resolution in order to prevent a shutdown. This was widely viewed as a political misstep and as the backlash got worse, Schumer canceled his book tour, apparently feeling a bit of the intense heat typically reserved for Republican House speakers.

Why was Schumer under so much fire? Many already fed-up Democrats wondered how their party leadership could possibly trust the administration to keep its word on funding the government if that administration was already starting to unilaterally cancel government spending by letting Elon Musk run loose with his bedazzled chainsaw.

Flash forward to this week and the same questions are being raised. How can Democrats cut a deal with Republicans if later in the year those same Republicans might simply claw back parts of the deal through further rescission packages?

Even some Senate Republicans acknowledge that Democrats are right to now be skeptical after they went and passed the first rescission package. And at least one House Democrat indicated to me that there will be much more pressure on Schumer to shut down the government before September.

And yet, I’m not sure the sentiments bubbling among the chamber’s rank-and-file members have percolated up to reach Democratic leadership. Folks like Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hold to the party’s venerable dogmas, including the belief that government is a force for good and therefore must be kept operational even when it’s politically or practically counterintuitive to do so. Absent a supermajority in the Senate, some amount of bipartisan trust (and the assumption that everyone is acting in good faith) are integral to keeping the government’s lights on.

But while some Democrats may be holding on to vague hope of reclaiming a bipartisan era of yore, the Trumpites are not. Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and chief architect of Project 2025, thinks the loss of bipartisan trust among lawmakers will actually be beneficial in the long run. For his purposes, at least.

In a meeting with reporters Thursday morning hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Vought said the budget process needs to be “less bipartisan,” adding:

There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, “I’m voting for a bipartisan appropriations process.” That may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain. And I want to have very good relationships with all Republican appropriators—or Democrat appropriators, if they conduct themselves with decorum. But as for Republican appropriators, I want to have a great relationship with them. We’re going to disagree at times, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a very good relationship, and I do, in fact, have a good relationship with them.

But the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan. We’re $37 trillion in debt and we produce [continuing resolutions] every year. And to the extent that we don’t produce CRs, it’s not individual bills that get signed into law. It’s omnibus bills that no one has read.

Vought went further, claiming that a more partisan appropriations process will give rise to a new era of bipartisanship one day.

“I actually think that over time, if we have a more partisan appropriations process—for a time—it will lead to more bipartisanship,” he said. “It’s not going to keep me up at night, and I think it will lead to better results by having the appropriations process be a little bit partisan, and I don’t think it’s necessarily leading to a shutdown.”

Vought’s argument is in direct contradiction to the assurances he gave senators during his confirmation hearing when he expressed “hope” that “we can have a bipartisan spending process of which I look forward to participating in if confirmed.”

Beyond that, his logic is somewhat obscure. My best guess for what he envisions is that Democrats will give up their opposition to Republican demands after being blamed for any government shutdown that results from their refusal to give in, no matter that the shutdown would be happening under a Republican governing trifecta. But perhaps the greasy breakfast (famously, some scrambled eggs and a couple of sausage links) had left me unprepared to follow the path taken by his unusual mind.

Schumer told reporters Thursday afternoon that Trump should fire Vought over his comments, adding, “He wants to destroy the way the Congress works.”

Still, the signs are, as of now, pointing to a likely shutdown in the fall. After working almost nonstop to get their “big, beautiful bill” through both chambers, Republican appropriators are behind schedule on the issue of government funding. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters they expect 60 percent of government funding to be taken care of before their planned August recess.

On the GOP side, there is mild concern that this practice of sending rescission packages to Congress that cut chunks out of their previously negotiated spending will lead to a further-diminished role for a branch of government already accustomed to rolling over and revealing its belly to the president. However, such concerns were only enough to dissuade two Senate Republicans from voting for the rescission: Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine)² and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The White House could, in theory, calm the waters by saying that they won’t push a rescission package to undo any part of a government funding deal that Congress passes in the fall, should they find the 60 votes in the Senate and majority of the House to pass one. But Vought, on Thursday, hinted that more rescission bills are in the future.

“I think if this continues to pass, we’re likely to send up another rescission package that will come soon,” Vought said. “We’re not there yet and have nothing to announce, but we’ve been talking about it, and there’s certainly an enthusiasm [among GOP lawmakers].”

You’re not moving on? After I specifically asked you to?

Donald Trump’s base has long stood upon a foundation of shared conspiracy theories, from birtherism, the “Deep State,” and QAnon to—that’s right—the life, secret work, and suspicious death of Jeffrey Epstein.

Even though it’s hardly the first time Trump has failed to deliver the goods on a cuckoo belief he has encouraged his followers to adopt,³ Trump’s reversal on Epstein is causing major strife within his political base. The conflict has now reached Congress, where a resolution brought forward by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) aims to force the administration to release its entire trove of information on Epstein, including materials not just related to his death but on all his contacts and business.

While Massie regularly fends off attacks from Trump, some of his colleagues who are typically more subservient to the boss have gotten enraged enough (or perhaps afraid enough of the rage of certain constituencies) to get on board. As of today, nine Republicans have joined Massie’s effort that would force the resolution back to the floor for a full vote. The members include:

• Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

• Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.)

• Eric Burlison (R-Mo.)

• Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)

• Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)

• Cory Mills (R-Fla.)

• Eli Crane (R-Ariz.)

• Tom Barrett (R-Mich.)

• Max Miller (R-Ohio)

Assuming all Democrats sign a discharge petition as well, Massie would have the necessary 218 members to force a vote.

Discharge petitions are extremely rare and usually take a considerable amount of time. This particular discharge petition is a direct rebuke of the majority leadership—and, in this case, the president. That might be too much for Republicans to stomach, even if it would make it possible for them to make good on one of their base’s most cherished conspiracy theories.

1. The DOGE website currently claims $190 billion in estimated savings. The rescission, which supposedly codifies them, is about $181 billion short of that figure.

2. There is also the strong possibility that the rescission package would not have passed the Senate had Collins not pulled an amendment she sponsored that would have significantly reduced the overall cuts.

3. A fun anecdote: After Trump finally admitted that Barack Obama was born in the United States during a late 2016 campaign event at his D.C. hotel, I rode the Metro back to Capitol Hill with Trump’s then-future press secretary, Sean Spicer. He exhaled and said to me, “Do you think this is over now?” I laughed and said something to the effect of, “That’s up to him.”