Schumer made the smart move. [View all]

[lapucelle]

Had the government shut down, it would have remained shut for as long as Republicans chose to keep it closed.

Within a few weeks, the federal courts would have run out of reserve funds to operate. Civil litigation would have been postponed because only "mission critical" cases would continue to be heard, and they are generally limited to criminal cases.

The court postponements would have included cases in which the DOJ is a party and the Trump administration is being sued. Last time around (2019), the Trump Justice Department furloughed three-fourths of Immigration Court judges, postponing thousands of cases.

While the Social Security Administration may have continued to cut checks, in all likelihood new applications would not have been processed during the shutdown. There's already a backlog due to staffing reductions, and Trump and Musk would have been handed a gift: the opportunity to blame Democrats for their gutting of the Social Security system.

Once current funding had been exhausted by agencies, the provisions of the Anti-Deficiency Act would be triggered. It's the Office of Management and Budget that generally determines who is furloughed and who is not based on the contingency plans filed by federal agencies.

You used to be able to view agency contingency plans on the whitehouse.gov website. That information has been disappeared.

A shutdown would have played right into Trump's hands. The waters would have been muddied as to exactly who was responsible for any stoppages in services. National Parks would have been closed. Social Security applications would have been put aside. Any federal cases involving the Trump administration would have been held in abeyance.

All of that is just the start, and the "Blame the Democrats:" narrative would have been repeated over and over again on social media, on Fox, and eventually in the MSM.

Does anyone think that Johnson would have been eager to negotiate or introduce a new CR while the chaos played out, and Senate Democrats were shouldering the blame?

And while some Senate Democrats will be absorbing all the incoming heat, as things stand, every Democratic representative has clean hands as to the onerous budget cuts in the CR, and the government did not shut down.

That could very well be the key to winning back the House.

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www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/heres-how-shutdown-could-affect-courts
www.crfb.org/papers/government-shutdowns-qa-everything-you-should-know#whatisashutdown
www.justice.gov/jmd/media/1377216/dl
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Agency-Lapse-FAQs-9.27.2023.pdf
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-for-agencies/agency-contingency-plans