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Sen. Andy Kim warned that Democrats won’t be inclined to throw Republicans a lifeline to avert a government shutdown next month unless President Trump cedes power back to Congress.
Kim (D-NJ) argued that Trump has brought the country to the “cusp of a constitutional crisis” with his heavy-handed use of the executive branch and echoed Democratic plans to use the shutdown fight as leverage.
“This is on them,” Kim told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday in reference to Republicans. “They are the majority. And if they cannot govern then, you know, that’s for the American people to see.”
If Congress fails to act, there will be a government shutdown on March 14. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, it is widely believed that they lack the votes to avert a shutdown without Democrats.
That’s because the GOP has a threadbare majority in the House and a motley crew of hardliners who vote against almost all measures to avert a shutdown.
“I’ve worked through multiple government shutdowns,” Kim added. “I would be the last person to want to get to that stage. But we are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis seeing this administration taking steps that are so clearly illegal.
“Until we see a change in that behavior we should not allow and condone that, nor should we assist in that.”
The Garden State Democrat was alluding to Trump’s efforts to transform the government via executive powers, which critics in Congress argue is overstepping his authority under the separation of powers principles in the Constitution.
For instance, the Trump administration has recently attempted to fold the US Agency for International Development into the State Department. Some of those efforts have been halted by the courts.
Trump has tapped Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk to effectively take a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy, which has alienated Democrats.
Democrats have been on the other side of government shutdown fights in recent years, as Republicans have used them to leverage concessions.
Now they feel the tables have turned. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has also teased plans to leverage the shutdown fight.
“I have made clear to House Republican leadership that any effort to steal taxpayer money from the American people, end Medicaid as we know it or defund programs important to everyday Americans, as contemplated by the illegal White House Office of Management and Budget order, must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill, if not sooner,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to colleagues earlier this month.
The last major government shutdown took place in late 2018 and spilled into 2019 during a fight over Trump’s demands for border wall funding. That shutdown lasted 35 days.
Every fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1, Congress is tasked with funding the government or face a shutdown. GOP leaders have effectively punted from the fall until March 14 via stopgap measures.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that Republicans are still mulling plans for how to avert a shutdown.
“All options are on the table right now,” Johnson told “Fox News Sunday.” “Just getting everyone to agree to what that final spending number is going to be has been the holdup. But we have time, it’s early February, and the deadline is March 14.”
