After reaching a broad two-year agreement on spending and making significant progress on passing appropriations bills, lawmakers seemed determined to prevent a damaging government shutdown. On Sunday, however, the president threw a wrench in these plans, tweeting that he would be willing to shut down the government if Congress didn’t approve money for his border wall. As midterms loom, the president should have stood by the carefully negotiated agreement, claiming victory for rational government, rather than risking the spectacle of government dysfunction just before an election that could cost his party control.
Trump has been hammering away at the border wall since the election, but has found little congressional support as Republicans recognize that the $25 billion project would make passing a funding bill agreed on by both the House and the Senate nearly impossible.
The president’s tweet, however, left little uncertainty on his position and its threat to congressional agreement on appropriations. He wrote: “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the wall!”
As midterms loom and the president sees that he has failed to deliver on a key promise, he wants to force congress to act. As GOP leaders have repeatedly told the president, however, this is not the right time to have a fight over border wall funding.
Not only would a shutdown when Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House signal dysfunctional leadership to voters, but a shutdown would also hurt the U.S. economy, which is already threatened by Trump’s trade war.
Moreover, a government shutdown would actually cost the government money. Not only are there tens of millions of dollars of added administrative costs to shut down and then restart the machinery of government, but there is also an estimated loss of more than $300 million in revenue even if the shutdown lasts only three days. Beyond those figures, government services that make the economy function coming to a standstill hurts even more — to the tune of about $2 billion a week in lost output.
Although a shutdown is generally bad for the party seen as responsible, the threat is especially acute as midterm elections fall in close proximity to the deadline for a funding bill to avoid government shutdown. Indeed, the current round of government spending is set to expire on Sept. 30, just 37 days before the midterm election.
Talk of a shutdown is especially galling as it is completely unnecessary. Instead of playing shutdown games, the president could have championed the bipartisan spending bills that look like they will pass before the end of September as a victory for Republican leadership. That would have given GOP candidates a boost and reassured voters.
Of course, this is not the first time that the president has eyed a shutdown over a lack of border wall money in spending bills. In the spring of 2017, for example, he tweeted that maybe a “good shutdown” would be helpful to push support for the wall. Eventually, the president was convinced that this would be a bad idea and, hopefully, he will be convinced again.
