During an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, host Maria Bartiromo asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for his take on when the government shutdown might end. Now in its 34th day, the ongoing shutdown is poised to surpass the previous record for the longest in U.S. history — the 35-day shutdown that lasted from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019.
“I think it’s likely to open Wednesday or Thursday of this week,” Cruz said. “The Democrats will wait until after Election Day because they think a shutdown is good for energizing the crazies in their party. But I think it will be either late this week or early next week.”
Clearly Cruz doesn’t have a crystal ball, but he likely has a more informed sense of what’s motivating his Democratic colleagues than the average observer. He’s also not the first Washington insider to express this view — in fact, the idea that Democrats wanted to keep it going through the election was circulating in the early days of the shutdown.
As I reported last week, several Democratic leaders, including House Whip Katherine Clark (MA) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Martin Heinrich (NM), have admitted publicly that their refusal to back a clean Republican spending bill is driven primarily by political considerations. After losing the presidency and control of both chambers of Congress last year, they view this standoff as their only remaining source of leverage. They believe that appearing to fight against Medicaid cuts and for the extension of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year will please their base and drive voter turnout on Election Day.
If Cruz is correct, once the election has passed, Democrats will claim they fought the good fight — but that, faced with the prospect of Americans losing their SNAP benefits, threats to air traffic safety, and military families going without pay, they had no choice but to support the spending bill.
And they will continue to blame the shutdown on the Republicans as former President Barack Obama did during a weekend campaign rally in Norfolk, Virginia, for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.
He told the enthusiastic crowd, “The government is shut down and the Republicans who currently are in charge of Congress, they’re not even pretending to solve the problem. They have not even been showing up to work, not in session. Where are you? What are you doing?”
He continued, “Our country and our politics are in a pretty dark place right now. It’s hard to know where to start, because every day this White House offers up a fresh batch of lawlessness and recklessness and mean-spiritedness and just plain craziness.”
Of course, Obama seemed to forget his own position during the October 2013 government shutdown, when the situation was reversed. At that time, House Republicans demanded that any spending bill include provisions to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act — the Obama administration’s signature legislative achievement — in the same way that the “Big, Beautiful Bill” serves as the cornerstone of the Trump administration’s domestic agenda.
And just as Trump is currently unwilling to negotiate with Democrats over their demands, Obama flatly refused to negotiate with Republicans then, repeatedly vowing not to pay a “ransom” to secure passage of what should have been routine legislation. The shutdown ultimately ended through bipartisan negotiations in the Senate — without any changes to the ACA.
Cruz’s theory is entirely plausible and we’ll soon see whether he’s right. Prolonging the shutdown may indeed rally support from the Democratic base. However, recent polls have shown that their continued resistance to a clean Republican spending bill is hurting the party among independent voters who have grown weary of their political gamesmanship.
But if Cruz is wrong, there’s no telling how long the shutdown might drag on.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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