The White House has made clear that its shutdown strategy is to inflict pain on Democrats and blue states. Republicans insist that pain would be Democrats’ fault.
It’s the latest escalation in a blame game that has gone on for weeks. But now that the shutdown is in full swing after Senate Democrats blocked a short-term funding bill, the finger-pointing has shifted from who shut down the government to who is responsible for the pain that comes from it.
Republicans were firm: President Donald Trump isn’t the one causing anguish by pursuing cuts while he has the authority to do so.
“Democrats have made it painful,” Sen. Rick Scott told NOTUS. “Democrats are the ones who did the shutdown.”
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And it’ll be painful.
Trump said Tuesday that his administration has the ability to make “irreversible” changes during the shutdown, and that it can “get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.” The cuts would be to “Democrat things” such as programs “that they like.”
“The shutdown is not his decision. It’s Sen. Schumer’s,” Sen. John Boozman told NOTUS. “We could be done with all of this if Schumer would agree to go forward for a few weeks, negotiate.”
Sen. Josh Hawley said Democrats think they’re punishing the president by shutting the government down, when they’re really punishing the rest of the country.
“The people who are inflicting the pain are sadly my Democrat colleagues,” Hawley said. “They’re the reason we’re shut down here, so I invite them to come out to my state and talk to the farmers who can’t get their loans, talk to the veterans who can’t get their coverage, talk to the doctors who can’t get Medicaid reimbursements.”
“It’s bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad,” he added.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin said Trump “won’t make it as painful” as then-President Barack Obama did during the 2013 shutdown, pointing to the closing of the Smithsonian museums and national parks during that shutdown.
“Democrats chose to shut it down. When they do that, they give the discretion to the president of the United States,” Mullin said. “They decided to give the power to the president of the United States. What he decides to do, they own.”
But Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has made it clear both publicly and privately that cuts will go far beyond closing museums or parks, telling House Republicans on a private call Wednesday that he plans to send reductions in force, or RIFs, to agencies beginning in “one to two days.” He said these layoffs would be “consequential,” according to multiple sources on the call.
This comes after Vought said he would freeze $18 billion in federal funding for infrastructure projects in New York, citing “unconstitutional DEI principles.” He touted this hold of funds on his call with House Republicans, with one member saying it sounded like the money was going to be “tied up in OMB knots.” Vought later posted on X that $8 billion worth of Green New Deal projects were being cancelled in 16 largely Democratic states.
Speaker Mike Johnson defended the Trump administration, and argued that Vought was trying to make the shutdown less painful.
“We just had a call with Russ, and he’s actually being very judicious and careful and deliberate, and how those are designed and how they’re prioritized and what order,” Johnson told NOTUS in a brief interview about the proposed RIFs.
Johnson added that Vought was attempting to “minimize the pain,” and part of that process involves making cuts.
“And obviously he’s going to put at the top of the list programs that do not comport with the president’s priorities,” Johnson said. “So that’s an obvious thing, stating the obvious, but that’s what happened.”
Vought also said that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children is almost out of money, and that there is nothing the administration can do about it unless the government reopens.
There was no indication from House Republicans that Vought was announcing these cuts off the cuff. Rather, members believed it was a thorough and thought-out plan to make Democrats as uncomfortable as possible during the shutdown. (Vought has been threatening mass layoffs during the shutdown since at least last week.)
Some Democrats believe that Trump’s insistence on playing hardball shows that Republicans were never interested in coming to the negotiating table.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told Semafor on Wednesday that Trump’s goal “has been all along to make this painful.”
“This isn’t about policy priorities for them; they want to send a message,” Aguilar said. “It shows we don’t have true negotiating partners over there.”
Other Republicans, like Sen. Thom Tillis, were vocal about the executive branch’s potential for overreach, though they often stopped short of outright criticism.
“I think we just need to be careful with the messaging,” Tillis told reporters Wednesday. “It’s all about scope.”
Tillis said the administration could overplay its hand and “concern people like me who like limits on the executive branch.” If the cuts and layoffs begin undermining congressional authority, “we have to look at it,” he added.
“I may not even disagree with what they’re trying to do, but the ‘how’ matters, you know, if you care about separation of powers,” Tillis added.
Before the shutdown, House Republicans, including House Appropriations Committee’s chair, Rep. Tom Cole, were seemingly warning Democrats about the actions the executive branch would take if Congress ran past its funding deadline. Cole said the shutdown would bring “discredit on everybody.”
“All that does is enhance the power of the executive branch — not just during the shutdown, but it looks like, ‘Well, these yokels can’t get the job done,’” Cole said Monday. “You got one guy over here running the whole executive branch, and he can. So, whose hands are you playing into? You’re weakening the power of Congress when you go into a shutdown, not strengthening it.”
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