If there isn't a government shutdown next weekend, it'll be a minor miracle. It certainly won't be thanks to the Trump regime, which has apparently thrown the whole process of budgeting into complete chaos. But that's what happens when you have Freedom Caucus alumni like Mick Mulvaney in charge of your budgeting. He still thinks someone else is going to get the blame when everything blows all to hell.
The hard line taken by White House officials, particularly Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, has strained an emerging deal between House and Senate leaders that would skirt hot-button issues that could shut down the government. In particular, administration officials' hopes of giving President Donald Trump a win during his first 100 days, such as border wall funding or a crackdown on sanctuary cities, have complicated what had been a relatively smooth, bicameral, bipartisan negotiation, according to staffers in both parties.
But Democrats are taking an aggressive stance, too, flatly insisting that Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan make a commitment to funding Obamacare's cost-sharing subsidies as a precondition to voting for any bill to fund the government through September. Democrats have also talked tough on ruling out funding for a wall or a provision restricting billions in federal grants from cities that don't enforce federal immigration laws.
"Negotiations are slow-going," said a Republican aide familiar with the bargaining. "There is a deal to be had—a good one with wins for both parties, but I think with a new minority leader and a new president, anything can happen. … If we don't get much progress by this weekend, bad news."
Republicans are being pressured by more than just the Democrats to come up with funding for the Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with pretty much the entire healthcare industry, is clamoring for it. There's real incentive for them to get that one done. Ryan and McConnell both know the political danger of a shutdown, made even more disastrous by the fact that it's their own president they're fighting with. It was fun and games to have these showdowns with President Obama—red meat to the base. But a fight with Trump? That's just asking for all-out civil war.
This puts the Democrats in a remarkably strong negotiating position. The stuff they want—the Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies, the benefits for retired miners—are also things Republicans ultimately want. They can make their demands, then sit back with their buckets of popcorn and watch McConnell, Ryan, and Trump fight it out.