A Last Ditch Attempt to Avoid a Shutdown: Trump Meets with Democrats This Afternoon

Democrats keep insisting on negotiating with the threat of a government shutdown and, as I write this, that shutdown is only about 36 hours away. If nothing changes, the government will shutdown Tuesday night at midnight. However, President Trump has agreed to a meeting with Democrats this afternoon as a last ditch attempt to stop that from happening.

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions.

If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.

All of this happens in advance of the last chance to avoid a shutdown tomorrow when Senate Republicans will once again bring a clean CR passed by the House up for a vote.

Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown.

But to hold on to their negotiating leverage, Senate Democrats will likely have to vote against a bill to temporarily extend government funding on Tuesday, just hours before a shutdown — an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive.

Everything prior to that vote is just Democrats elbowing for position. Their message heading into this is going to be we tried to negotiate with Trump and he said no. That’s the message they want because their voters really only care about opposing Trump and probably couldn’t name the Republicans in the House and Senate who are actually running this process.

The Republican position is pretty simple. We want to keep the government open:

Republicans have repeatedly dismissed concerns about the Affordable Care Act subsidies, as they do not expire until the end of the year, even as Democrats have stressed the need to address the issue before open enrollment starts on November 1.

“We can have that conversation, but before we do: release the hostage, set the American people free, keep the government open and then let’s have a conversation about those premium tax credits. I’m certainly open to that. I think we all are,” Thune said Sunday…

“Republicans are basically saying, let’s just keep the government open, that is the simplicity of their messaging, that is a reasonable sentence to most Americans,” said Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist. “Nobody gets it better than Mike Johnson, and he understands the political messaging is advantageous.”

But Democrats remain convinced they can win the PR battle. House Dems will be returning to Washington even though Republicans won’t be there.

House Democrats plan to return to Washington on Monday night to attempt to maximize pressure on Trump and Republicans, but their side of the Capitol will be mostly empty. Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to keep his members at home for the week, with GOP leadership sources arguing that they have already done their job and it’s on Schumer to accept their plan.

As I’ve said before, I think Democrats are going all the way this time. For them there are two phases to this fight. First, if the government shuts down, they do their best to blame Trump and win points with their own base for fighting him. They may lose the PR fight ultimately but it could still help them with their core voters.

Second, even if they do get blamed there’s a real chance the shutdown impacts the economy if it drags on. That’s especially true if Trump goes through with his threat to layoff tens of thousands of government workers. 

Government shutdowns can be political earthquakes that paralyze Washington, DC. But for the economy, shutdowns are often barely a blip…

Yet there are reasons this episode could be different – and not in a good way.

The US economy in 2025 looks more vulnerable than during past budget fights. The job market is stumbling, and the Trump administration is threatening even more federal layoffs. A government shutdown would just add more chaos and uncertainty, at a time when there is already plenty of both…

Investors and economists normally shrug off the furloughs of nonessential federal employees because they are repaid and return to work when the shutdown inevitably ends.

But the Trump administration is signaling that may not be the case this time.

That, I think, is the unspoken goal here. Democrats can’t say it aloud because rooting against our economy is a bad look, but politically it would certainly help them if the economy faltered before the midterms. And that could happen if it drags on a long time and if Trump makes some of the temporary layoffs permanent.

This is the actual danger to Republicans in this scenario. If the result of this shutdown is that the stock market drops and unemployment goes up, then it really won’t matter who won the blame game. Voters won’t be thinking about that next fall, but they will be thinking about the state of the economy overall and they will hold Republicans responsible for that.

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