Fetterman to Dems: Grow Up

In the end, the final vote didn’t provide any drama or any surprises. The drama may come now that the House Republicans’ continuing resolution goes to the Senate. Democrats now have to decide whether their perfomative antics will include shutting down the same bureaucracies Donald Trump wants to eliminate.

Yesterday evening, the vote to pass the CR went smoothly for Speaker Mike Johnson, notching yet another win in a historically narrow majority:

The mostly party-line 217-213 vote came after an intensive lobbying campaign by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials to win over a handful of GOP holdouts. With current funding set to expire Friday night, lawmakers have little time to pass a funding extension in both chambers and get it to the president’s desk for his signature without a brief partial shutdown.

Senate leaders were hoping to clear the measure for Trump’s signature by Thursday night and leave town to start their St. Patrick’s Day weeklong recess a day early. Senators would need unanimous consent to speed up the legislative process to beat the Friday deadline.

House Democrats stuck to opposition [see update], forcing Johnson to pass it with Republicans alone. When Johnson succeeded, Democrats griped that the bill didn’t address their priorities:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., attacked the measure as a “partisan, reckless spending bill” that gives Trump too much authority and amounts to “an attack on veterans, an attack on families, an attack on seniors.”

Cole rejected that charge, saying Democrats were misrepresenting the bill’s contents.

“This bill is about keeping the government open, something my friends pride themselves on and often pat themselves on the back on,” Cole said of Democrats. “I would just urge my friends to keep the government open.”

Oddly enough, a clean CR is precisely what Democrats wanted in December, or at least what they pretended they wanted. This one was mostly clean, with several “anomalies” of increases and reductions that mostly canceled each other out. Defense spending went up by less than a percentage point while non-defense discretionary spending got trimmed by less than two percent, Roll Call notes, but the overall amount of change was a $7 billion reduction in authorizations in a $1.6 trillion bill — less than 1% in reduction of spending authorizations. 

So now the bill passes to the Senate with three days to go before the expiration of the current CR. If they want to take off for a long St. Patrick’s Day weekend, as Roll Call suggests, they have two days to deal with the bill. That means it will take unanimous consent to expedite consideration, and of course it will take two cloture votes requiring 60 ayes to allow a final floor vote. 

Will Democrats balk and let Trump run a government shutdown — even for a weekend? That’s the trap that House Republicans set for Chuck Schumer with the passage of the CR. And at least one Senate Democrat recognizes it. John Fetterman took to Twitter/X to scold his party for their “undignified antics,” and pledged to allow a final vote on the CR:

The weeks of performative “resistance” from those in my party were limited to undignified antics.

Voting to shut the government down will punish millions or risk a recession.

I disagree with many points in the CR, but I will never vote to shut our government down. pic.twitter.com/yhrnmwHUB5

— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) March 11, 2025

Fetterman felt strongly enough about Democrats’ performative nonsense that he also posted his message on TruthSocial:

Democrats have now backed themselves into a box canyon with their performative outrage. A smarter leadership would have found ways to engage with Trump to direct his attention to their own priorities. Trump is fairly easy to engage — all it takes is a little brown-nosing up front to get Trump open to a negotiation, and the opportunity to cut a deal is always an enticement. Gavin Newsom actually figured that out in Trump’s first term, and again during the wildfires that ran through Los Angeles. It’s not enough to derail Trump’s long-term goals, but it might have been enough to get a CR or even a formal budget that could have given Dems a few wins.

Instead, they stuck with Al Green’s antic and auction paddles, which seems to be what Fetterman references in his messaging on the CR. Now they’re stuck with either swallowing a GOP-only CR or triggering a government shutdown that will sideline even more of the federal workers they claim to champion. Thanks to the deadline and the high-wire act it took to pass the CR in the House, there won’t be any room to negotiate now or amend the bill to suit Schumer and Democrats. 

And after the embarrassing tantrums on national TV last Tuesday, a refusal to pass funding means Democrats will own a shutdown lock, stock, and barrel. They are offering nothing but obstruction now, not even a unifying set of principles other than L’Homme Orange Mal. Everyone will know that Democrats chose a shutdown, and everyone will know they chose it out of spite than any real principled position. 

Perhaps they should take Fetterman’s advice … and grow up. 

Update: One Democrat did vote for the CR — Rep. Jared Golden of Maine.