Reporter Memo: Congressional Republicans Introduce Shutdown Threat with Rescissions Vote
This week, Congressional Republicans will make the first move in the next major battle in Congress this year — the upcoming government funding deadline on Sept. 30 — and they appear poised to instigate a government shutdown. As reporters cover Republicans’ actions, it’s critical to understand their motivations and what the consequences will be for the American people beyond those implicated by the program cuts in the rescissions bill itself.
Congress can’t reach bipartisan deals if Republicans can unilaterally change them at any time
- Congressional Republicans will march the country right into a full government shutdown if they refuse to stand by bipartisan funding agreements.
- For months already, Congressional Republicans have aided and abetted the Administration’s illegal and unconstitutional actions to withhold money for programs that serve the American people. Since Day One, the Administration has been executing a government shutdown of its own prerogative, withholding more than $430 billion in funding.
- By supporting the rescission package on the Senate floor this week, Congressional Republicans would throw away any remaining credibility to reach appropriations agreements and give away more of their power to the Administration.
- Congress can’t reach bipartisan agreements if Republicans will later abandon them with party-line votes such as the rescission package being considered.
- As Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “[I]t is absurd to expect Democrats to play along with funding the government if Republicans are just going to renege on a bipartisan agreement by concocting rescissions packages behind closed doors that can pass with only their votes.”
- There is not anyone in America who would willingly enter a contractual agreement knowing the other person would back out of the agreement whenever they wanted. You wouldn’t get married if your spouse says they can cheat on you as soon as you leave the church.
- To fund the government, a deal must be a deal. Democrats must fight for the health and safety of the American people – for American schools, health care, veterans, roads and bridges and more – and expect any agreement to be honored in full.
Do Congressional Republicans really want to walk the plank for unelected bureaucrat Russ Vought?
- Congressional Republicans just spent several months lying to the American people about their Big Ugly Bill – saying that it wouldn’t increase deficits, it wouldn’t cut health insurance and it wouldn’t cause electricity costs to soar – and the putrid polling of their law shows Americans know the truth. Congressional Republicans should ask themselves if doubling-down on lies to the American people – on behalf of Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s ideological crusade to enact his Project 2025 agenda – gets them anything of value.
- The Trump Administration has frozen funding for agencies across government for months, punishing local schools, cancer research, national parks, road and bridge projects and on and on. Do Congressional Republicans really think the American people will believe they aren’t responsible for a government shutdown? When Republicans control all three bodies of the legislative process?
- The Administration is pushing this rescission package because they know their impoundment strategy is illegal. Conservative judicial heroes Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Kavanaugh have all ruled in the past that the President has no inherent authority to impound funds. And as a former staffer in President Reagan’s Office of White House Counsel, now Chief Justice Roberts wrote the President has no authority to impound funds and that, “no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse.”
- Rather than rest on threadbare legal reasoning, Director Vought is leaning on Congressional Republicans to do his dirty work. Director Vought has said several times he plans to send to Congress more rescission packages in the future – completely undermining any chance to agree on the terms of government funding going forward.
- Having passed their Big Ugly Bill and getting their long-promised tax cuts for the wealthy, Congressional Republicans need to ask themselves what the benefit is of continuing Russ Vought’s ideological crusade. The purported “savings” of $9 billion from this package amounts to less than one-quarter of one percent (0.25 percent) of the deficits added by the Big Ugly Bill.
As Congressional Republicans help their elite donors, Americans are aware and engaged
- As Americans learn more about the effects of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, the polling for Congressional Republicans sinks further. A government shutdown pushed by Congressional Republicans will push those numbers even lower.
- Scores of stakeholder groups representing millions of Americans have engaged with Congress this week to push back on budget cuts for programs that everyday Americans rely on – whether it be funding for education, rural broadcasting or international food assistance provided by American farmers.
- Thousands of everyday Americans have signed petitions and pushed Congressional phone lines and emails to say that any rescission package approved on a party-line vote puts all of government funding at risk of a shutdown. A threat to cut any program funded by annual appropriations by party-line vote is a threat to all programs.