The One Where They Shut Down the Federal Government . . . Again?

Let’s peel back the layers on the onion that is this current mess we find our federal government without any of the mainstream media’s distractions. The reality is simple: government shutdowns are not acts of God or cosmic misfortune – they’re manufactured crisis and chaos, engineered by one party that has made obstruction its perennial brand . . . Democrats.

From the annals of recent history to this fresh wound felt by the American people at 12:00 am this morning, the pattern screams louder than a Cory Booker filibuster. Yet again, Republicans extended olive branches and Democrat leadership snapped them in half, all to protect their sacred cows – bloated government spending, programs that have no business still existing, and an unaccountable bureaucracy loyal to party rather than The People. And every single time, it is the American taxpayer who bleeds from these self-inflicted wounds: veterans waiting on promised benefits, small businesses choking on miles of red tape, and “essential” federal workers (think our military and TSA agents) staring at empty payroll envelopes.

First and foremost, let’s clarify something . . . government shutdowns should never be “routine.” The American people have every right and expectation of their elected representatives to do their job, budget for our priorities, pass that budget, and keep spending in check. It’s basic kitchen-table budget rules that every family across this country operates by – this is our income, these are our bills, this is how much we should save, and this is what is left. But, with that all being said, dig into the ledger a little deeper and culprits responsible stand out like a glitch in The Matrix.

Federal government shutdowns weren’t even a “thing” until the 1970s, when budget rules got weaponized, but the modern playbook was drafted, written, practiced, and put into play under Democrat dominance.

Take 2013: Sixteen bone-chilling days from October 1 to October 17, sparked by House Republicans’ push to defund or delay Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) – a bloated behemoth already unraveling at launch. Speaker John Boehner offered clean continuing resolutions (CRs) multiple times with no strings attached, just to keep the lights on while the two sides haggled over this massively expensive issue that taxpayers were split on. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s response? To stonewall every single CR demanding full and unconditional fealty to Obamacare or nothing at all. The cost? 800,000 furloughed workers, $24 billion in economic drag, national parks padlocked while World War II veterans stormed barricades in protest just because they wanted to pay tribute to their fallen comrades. At the time, national Democrats spun it as “GOP extremism,” but the math doesn’t lie – Democrats held the veto pen and chose chaos over compromise like always.

Then came 2018 and the 35-day marathon of misery – the longest government shutdown in history – from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019. President Trump was seeking $5.7 billion for border security – an issue that national Democrats championed in the 1990s and early 2000s – to fund a wall designed to plug the hemorrhaging frontier that Joe Biden/Kamala Harris/Autopen’s open-door fiasco later turned into a flood. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer rejected bipartisan deals and clean CRs outright and without consideration – even as TSA agents called in sick to avoid unpaid shifts and Coast Guard families stood in queue at food banks – all because they didn’t want President Trump to fulfill a campaign promise of securing the southern border. The economic hit? $11 billion in lost GDP with billions more in delayed loans, and halted FDA inspections that risked public health.

To his credit, President Donald J. Trump held the line longer than anyone before him but still had to ultimately compromise. Democrats? They owned the shutdown, without a doubt, and used it to kneecap border security while painting conservatives as racist boogeymen.

Flash forward to today, October 1, 2025: Same script has been written, but they’ve updated the cast.

House Republicans, under Speaker Mike Johnson, rammed through a clean, seven-week CR on September 30 – no riders, no demands, just status quo funding to get the nation to November 21. It passed on party lines and clearly was a bipartisan lifeline tossed across the aisle. Senate Democrats, led by Schumer, filibustered it into oblivion, insisting on tacking on billions for . . . you guessed it . . . expiring Obamacare subsidies that only would have propped up the healthcare house of cards they built. The result? Lights out at midnight: 800,000 federal jobs on ice, national parks once again shuttered, economic ripples already being felt by the markets – Dow futures were down 0.5% in after-hours tremors. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that this isn’t governance; it’s a grudge match with national Democrats betting that the American people will buy their “GOP sabotage” fairy tale once again.

No smoke, no mirrors, no cliffhangers until after the next commercial break (brought to you by Big Pharma . . . but that’s another post entirely) – this government shutdown is a Democrat-owned tar baby from start to finish.

House Republicans delivered: Clean CR? Check. President Trump amplified the urgency, warning weeks ago of the Left’s “reckless demands” and floating mass layoffs of bureaucratic fat in a brilliant attempt to turn lemons into lemonade. Even as negotiations faltered, President Trump shrugged from the Oval Office: “A lot of good can come from shutdowns – we can get rid of things we didn’t want,” with his Administration already eyeing excessive government waste like slush funds for activist media outlets.

Republicans smartly offered Democrats an off-ramp: Fund the government first, then negotiate subsidies. The Democrats response was an almost Willy Wonka-like response of “Strike that and reverse it,” to hijack a must-pass bill to force-feed Obamacare extensions that subsidize failure and funnel taxpayer cash to the outer fringes. Chuck Schumer thundered on the Senate Floor about “Republican cruelty,” but polls shred that argument: 65% of Americans are pointing directly at Democrats as the ones to blame, per freshly released polls. Hakeem Jeffries echoed the Schumer Echo Chamber: “GOP inability to govern.”

Talk about projection at its peak.

Democrats have engineered three of the last four major shutdowns – 2013 over Obamacare, 2018 over the Border Wall, and now today over Obamacare subsidies – each time prioritizing ideology over paychecks and partisanship over people. Biden/Harris/Autopen’s border bloodbath and economic hangover are simply backdrops to this addiction national Democrats have. The truth is simple . . . Republicans control the House and the White House; they passed the bill. Democrats control the Senate filibuster; they killed it. Ownership isn’t shared or halved here – it's absolute!

Enough with the kabuki theater. If common sense is to claw its way back from the swamp that is Washington, D.C., Americans – the veterans, the welders, the warehouse workers, the small business owners, the teachers, and the farmers – must roar a unified decree.

First: Ban the Riders – no more tacking pet projects onto CRs; fund the basics clean and negotiate the rest in the light of day. After all, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Second: Dock the Paychecks – Congress doesn’t do their job and fund the government? Then they don’t get funded themselves. Congressional salaries should get docked across the board during government shutdowns – no exceptions and no payback or catch-ups for those who engineer the mess. Speaker Johnson’s call to slash Congressional pay hits a home run with Americans . . . make it statute.

Third: Set a Baseline by Balancing the Budget – This seems obvious, I know. But, we should mandate annual votes on balanced budgets with automatic CRs at 2019 spending levels if bipartisan negotiations tank – pre-COVID bloat and post-Biden/Harris/Autopen excess. No more trillion-dollar deficits as the new normal . . . in fact, if you can make this a Constitutional Amendment, our nation would be better off in the long run.

And the big swing: Term Limits Now – Careerists like Chuck Schumer (35 years in office) thrive on generating crises and positioning themselves as a savior. Cap our federal elected officials at 12 years per chamber – 2 terms in the Senate and 6 terms in the House – in order to force fresh blood that is more fearful of the retribution of the ballot than that of the filibuster. President Trump’s draining of the swamp starts here.

This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s war footing. Call your senators and representatives, flood switchboards, light up X with #DemsOwnTheShutdown, and thank President Trump for not waiting idly by for Congress to remember it has a job; when they stall, President Trump isn’t afraid to use the power of his office to push forward on behalf of the American people. The heartland built this nation; they can and will rebuild Washington, D.C., one demand and one vote at a time.

Or, if that doesn’t sound like something you’re willing to do, you can sit back and continue to watch the seemingly never-ending series where the Left’s chaos becomes our nation’s constant.

Your move, patriots.