President Trump has repurposed money to fund military salaries during the government shutdown. He has pledged to find ways to make sure many in law enforcement get paid. He has used the fiscal impasse to halt funding to Democratic jurisdictions, and is trying to lay off thousands of federal workers.
Government shutdowns are usually resolved only after the pain they inflict on everyday Americans forces elected officials in Washington to come to an agreement. But as the shutdown nears a fourth week, Mr. Trump’s actions have instead reduced the pressure for an immediate resolution and pushed his political opponents to further dig in.
“We’re not going to bend,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on Friday, the 17th day of the shutdown. “We’re not going to break.” He added: “All of these efforts to try to intimidate Democratic members of the House and the Senate are not going to work.”
Unlike past presidents, Mr. Trump appears to feel little urgency to strike a deal to reopen the government. Instead, he has used the shutdown, which began Oct. 1, as an opportunity to further remake the federal bureaucracy and jettison programs he does not like, seizing on unorthodox budgetary maneuvers that some have called illegal.
Administration officials appear undaunted by the criticism, even after a federal judge temporarily blocked their efforts to conduct mass firings. On Friday, some agencies indicated in court filings that they might proceed with layoffs that officials suggested were not covered by the order.
Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the architect of the effort to remake the government, has pledged to “stay on offense” throughout the shutdown.
“He now has this cover for doing what at least Russ Vought and that coalition has wanted to do all along,” Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, said of Mr. Trump.
The standoff in Congress hinges on a fight over a short-term funding measure. Republicans want to pass one at current budget levels, while Democrats want to include additional money for health care programs and language that would limit Mr. Trump’s power to freeze funding.
Asked in the Oval Office this week whether he would use his deal-making skills to bring the shutdown to an end, Mr. Trump said that he was instead working to lower health care costs without the help of Congress, by negotiating agreements directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription costs.
“We have to take care of our health care,” he said.
White House officials say that the administration’s moves are meant to send the message that it is Mr. Trump, not congressional Democrats, who is helping Americans when government funding has lapsed.
“Any negative impacts felt by the American people have purely been caused by the Democrats,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
The administration has mitigated some of the fallout by using budgetary maneuvers to keep salaries flowing to some federal workers, including border agents and law enforcement officers, as well as members of the military. Mr. Trump has also pledged to use tariff money to fund a food aid program for low-income Americans.
“We got the people that we want paid, paid,” Mr. Trump said this week.
It is a sharp contrast with the approach of past presidents, who expressed frustration during shutdowns and resolved to bring them to a close. Some entered into lengthy negotiations with congressional leaders.
The Obama and Clinton administrations were both forced to furlough hundreds of thousands of workers during shutdowns that lasted more than two weeks. The longest shutdown on record came during Mr. Trump’s first term, beginning in December 2018 and lasting 34 full days.
No previous president, including Mr. Trump, attempted to use a fiscal impasse to carry out layoffs or to freeze money appropriated by Congress.
Inside the White House, officials continue to strategize about ways to alleviate harms on Republicans and inflict them on Democrats.
“The Democrats are getting killed in the shutdown, because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we’re opposed to,” Mr. Trump said this week. “And they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”
While some polling shows that Americans blame Republicans slightly more than Democrats for the shutdown, White House aides believe public sentiment will turn in their favor.
In their view, the longer the shutdown goes on, the more pressure will build on Democrats to cut a deal. Voters will see Mr. Trump finding ways to pay the troops and law enforcement, they say, while Democrats refuse to reopen the government and federal workers miss paychecks.
Indeed, the White House has undertaken what Mr. Vought calls a game of “budgetary Twister” to keep Republican priorities funded.
But that game can last only so long, experts say. Eventually money will run out, and the pain will intensify.
It is unclear which side will be held responsible. In the past, the party insisting on a policy change — as Democrats are doing now with health care costs — has incurred a greater portion of the blame than the party backing a simple continuation of government funding. But shutdowns also carry risks for the president, who many voters see as responsible for keeping Washington functioning.
So far, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponents have shown little sign of yielding.
In March, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, was faced with the choice of voting to fund the government or fighting the Trump administration by refusing to pass a short-term measure.
In a floor speech that was deeply unpopular with progressive Democrats, Mr. Schumer predicted the pain that Mr. Trump could inflict should a government shutdown occur.
He warned that Mr. Trump would use the shutdown to grab even more power from Congress, and would see the situation as an opportunity to make permanent cuts. He warned that a shutdown would give Mr. Trump and Mr. Vought “the keys to the city, state and country.”
But as Mr. Trump now carries out that very agenda, Mr. Schumer has said he is increasingly comfortable with Democrats’ position. The party has found a popular issue on which to fight Mr. Trump, one that has an impact on voters whose health care bills are poised to rise in the coming months.
“Every day gets better for us,” Mr. Schumer told Punchbowl News. “It’s because we’ve thought about this long in advance and we knew that health care would be the focal point on Sept. 30, and we prepared for it.”
The result is the rare situation in politics in which both sides believe they are winning, and see no reason to change course.
The longer the shutdown persists, however, the more pressure there will be to end it, especially as federal workers go without paychecks and face difficult decisions about paying their bills.
“I have no doubt that senators are going to start getting calls from people who are saying, ‘Democrats are making a stand on this issue of health care, but I need to pay my rent, my mortgage. I have to buy groceries,’” said Richard Himelfarb, a professor of political science at Hofstra University. “And the pressure is going to ratchet up, not on Trump, but it’s going to ratchet up on the Democrats.”
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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