Just two-and-a-half months removed from a painful government shutdown, Republicans have learned a lesson that these standoffs almost never break their way politically and should be avoided whenever possible.
By a wide bipartisan vote, 71-29, the Senate approved a government funding bill late Friday that takes almost all of the fiscal risk off the table until late in the year.
With President Donald Trump’s support, Republicans agreed to demands from Democrats to peel off one bill funding the Department of Homeland Security and let a slew of other big agencies get their full budgets for the rest of the fiscal year.
There will be a temporary lapse of funding over the weekend, technically a brief, partial shutdown that should have little impact. And that should be resolved when the House returns to session Monday and is expected to approve the plan.
Lawmakers have two more weeks to try to find a compromise for Homeland Security Department funding, which if unsuccessful will leave agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency in shutdown territory.
Congress did not pass a single one of the 12 bills funding federal agencies last year and instead approved several resolutions largely maintaining the previous year’s level of funding, effectively running the government on autopilot. By Monday, 95 percent of all federal funding could be set for this year.
That’s still four months behind schedule, but compared to last year, it’s the sort of bipartisan agreement that has been in short supply of late.
This also marks a real pivot from just last weekend, when both sides appeared to dig in and a shutdown seemed almost likely for major departments, including Defense, Labor, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
After the Jan. 24 killing of an intensive care unit nurse by immigration authorities in Minneapolis, Trump administration officials labeled the victim a “domestic terrorist.” Democrats threatened to block the funding bill without some tangible restrictions on federal personnel working in the mass deportation effort.
The public backlash to tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as other federal authorities, led to a recalibration by Trump and many Republicans, who watched the video of the killing and realized the initial labeling was wrong.
And at the same time, both parties realized that another shutdown would not be in anyone’s interest, particularly Republicans, who suffered a large degree of political blame for the 43-day government shuttering in October and November.
“I think last Saturday was a demonstration by lots of people on all sides of the issue that your impulse is oftentimes your undoing. And so I think everybody has, since then, been taking a step back, taking a breath,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota).
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the key Democrat who negotiated the end of the fall shutdown, used more blunt terms.
“Well, hopefully people learned some lessons,” she said Friday.
Shaheen declined to say specifically what those lessons were, but the fall shutdown turned into a political debacle for Republicans, as well as Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York).
Liberal activists felt that Trump and Republicans handled the shutdown so poorly — polls consistently showed voters blamed the GOP more than Democrats — that the minority party should have exacted more concessions, such as the extension of health care tax credits they had initially demanded. Many blamed Schumer for letting Shaheen and seven other members of his caucus cut a less-than-desirable deal.
On Friday’s vote, almost half the Democratic caucus joined Schumer in voting for the legislation, which was negotiated by several senior Democrats and included many liberal policy wins.
The bigger shift came from Republicans, who had another chance to try to blame Democrats for causing a shutdown with their last-minute demands. This time, though, Trump set a different tone, making clear to Republicans that he did not want to go through another round of shutdown showdowns.
“I think the president was really clear that, and rightly in my view, that he didn’t want to shut down. I think that was it. I think he said, ‘We’re not going to do this,’” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said.
In that regard, Trump was taking a lesson from an old GOP nemesis: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who during his tenure as the GOP leader had to negotiate Republicans out of several bad fiscal standoffs last decade. At the conclusion of a politically painful government shutdown in October 2013, McConnell used a farm metaphor to implore his GOP colleagues to never go down that path again.
“There’s no education in the second kick of the mule,” McConnell said in an interview.
He turned to a theatrical metaphor to argue that shutdowns always go poorly for Republicans.
“We’ve seen that movie before,” McConnell said in 2013. “We know how it ends.”
Over the last 30 years, Congress has blundered into a handful of partial or full government shutdowns, and all but one broke politically against the GOP.
In the mid-1990s, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) went toe-to-toe with President Bill Clinton during a pair of shutdowns. Those ended with Gingrich becoming politically unpopular and Clinton reelected to a second term.
In 2013, House Republicans instigated a shutdown to try to defund the Affordable Care Act, which President Barack Obama considered his landmark achievement. That ended with no concessions and a GOP brand at an all-time low.
In late 2018 and early 2019, Trump instigated a shutdown over demands for Congress to fund a border wall. After five weeks Senate Republicans were in open revolt, demanding Trump back down.
In early 2018, Democrats attempted a shutdown over demands for legislation to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. They backed down on the third day, realizing they had overplayed their hand.
Last fall, as Democrats laid plans to block funding over their demands to extend health care tax credits, Republicans predicted that Democrats would fold quickly because they would get blamed for government services not being available.
“Democrats are playing a losing game,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said in a Senate floor speech Oct. 2, the second day of that shutdown.
But Republicans did not run a disciplined political campaign to pressure Democrats. Trump spent a large chunk of the 43 days focused on foreign affairs, traveling overseas multiple times, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) decided to keep the House shuttered to try to force Senate Democrats to break — which opened him up to bipartisan criticism.
Trump’s approval rating continued its slow and steady decline, dropping from 40 percent in September to 36 percent in mid-November, according to Gallup. Democrats swept early November governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia and won big in other local elections.
“I think it was pretty obvious by public opinion,” Cramer said of the GOP’s shutdown defeat.
Trump’s continued focus on foreign policy, including ordering the capture of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has done little to help Trump politically at home. A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday showed his approval rating at 37 percent, with an alarming drop in support from Republicans for the president’s policies.
The violence in Minneapolis came against that backdrop, leading Trump and Republicans quickly to realize their political footing on immigration and border security — traditionally one of their strongest issues — had turned into quicksand.
Trying to shut down the government with such poor political standing would have been seen by many Republicans as malpractice.
After a couple days of bluster, most Senate Republicans liked the idea of approving the funding bills for everything except Homeland Security. One privately likened it to a football coach strategically deciding to kick a field goal and regroup rather than going for a touchdown and risk getting no points.
“I think that this is the right outcome. People just really get it. It’s really, really harmful to people when you shut the government down. You know, it really hurts working people,” Hawley said.
Cramer said the final piece of the puzzle came when Democrats agreed to pass a stopgap bill for Homeland Security and leave a few weeks to negotiate over the policy differences on the deportation effort.
A painful shutdown — assuming the House can approve the package — will have been averted.
“There’s a recognition on both sides that this isn’t really where we want to be, so let’s get through it,” Cramer said.
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