Democrats sharpen shutdown attacks on McCarthy, GOP

Democrats are seizing on a GOP-backed push for steeper cuts in government funding to argue Republicans are putting Americans in danger with the threat of a shutdown that could cut off various federal services by next week.

Administration officials, the White House and members of Congress have laid out a litany of problems that will be caused by an Oct. 1 shutdown, from airline disruptions to challenges for national security to the cutting off of programs that fight housing discrimination.

They are also arguing that the GOP cuts themselves are even worse, painting a draconian picture for government programs that would be the result of spending reductions from Republican proposals.

“We are calling out how a shutdown would damage our community’s economy and national security and we’re going to hold extreme House Republicans accountable,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Monday briefing.

“We’re gonna hold them accountable for the reckless cuts they are demanding as a condition for keeping the government open,” she added. 

Over the weekend, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said a shutdown would cut off training for air traffic controllers, contributing to problems at the nation’s airports.

President Biden on Monday said a shutdown would furlough workers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stopping its enforcement work fighting housing discrimination.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, ripped the GOP’s proposal for a full-year funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, saying it would amount to a nearly 30 percent cut below existing spending.

“We are witnessing a widespread attack on education at all levels that should horrify all of us,” DeLauro said, pointing to proposed reductions in funding for Title I grants that Democrats say could lead to thousands of teachers being “removed from classrooms serving low-income students.”

The government will shut down Oct. 1 without a new funding mechanism.

House GOP leadership’s latest plan is to try to pass four of their annual appropriations bills this week, in the hope that will convince conservatives who have objected to a GOP stopgap measure to back it.

But it’s unclear whether that strategy will work, and it would leave little time for the House to reach a consensus with the Senate and Biden.

The Senate, with a tiny Democratic majority, is expected to try to move its stopgap measure this week.

Despite the pending threat, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said over the weekend that Americans should not expect a shutdown in the days ahead and expressed hope that the House GOP would pass its bill.

“I think when it gets crunch time, people that have been holding off all this time blaming everybody else, will finally, hopefully, move off,” McCarthy said. “Because shutting down, and having border agents not get paid, your Coast Guard not get paid — I don’t see how that’s a victory.”

But House GOP leadership has had a hard time getting its party on the same page on spending.

In recent days, hard-line conservatives have twice canned deals negotiated by the party that would have funded the government for short periods of time to buy more time to negotiate a larger deal.

Some lawmakers on the right also blocked floor action on a full-year Pentagon funding bill last week, as they pressed leadership for lower overall spending levels for the party’s 12 annual bills than those pursued by negotiators. Democrats have criticized these bills for setting spending ceilings below what Congress approved in a debt ceiling deal earlier this year.

Republicans have acknowledged their proposals face a long shot in the Senate, but they say they are focused on unifying behind the most conservative starting point before bicameral negotiations pick up.

House Republicans are largely pessimistic about the prospect of a stopgap bill the upper chamber sends over, as Democrats call for freezing government spending at current levels while attaching supplemental spending for Ukraine and disaster relief.

Given the GOP infighting, the White House and Democrats have seemed confident that political blame for a shutdown would fall more on the House GOP.

In recent days, they’ve leaned further into that argument, noting what they say would be the devastating effects of a shutdown.

“We anticipate and expect that more than 50,000 of those who work for USDA will be furloughed, and when they’re furloughed, it means that they don’t receive a paycheck,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters on Monday, while calling out what he described as “an extreme House Republican effort to recklessly steer our government towards a preventable shutdown.”

“There are real impacts to real people on a daily basis, when Congress and the House, and House Republicans don’t do their job,” he added.