Continuing Continuing Continuing

The amended CR moves to the Senate

The first question I had after today’s vote on the continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Friday was whether Maine’s Democratic Rep. Jared Golden had become a DINO (Democrat in name only) by being the one Democratic vote needed to pass the amended version. To avoid media spin, I went to his website, so here is his statement in its entirety with the bold emphasis as mine and my commentary in square brackets in italics.

Golden’s Statement

WASHINGTON — Congressman Jared Golden (ME-02) voted today in favor of a seven-month Continuing Resolution, or “CR,” to fund the government and avoid a harmful government shutdown.

Without a new spending agreement in place, government funding is scheduled to lapse on March 14. In a shutdown, the president would have broad discretion to halt government services and furlough federal employees. [This is true. Most dangerously, Trump could declare an emergency, and invoke the power of sequestration to selectively cut funding. Chief Economic Ghoul and Head of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought gets to choose what to cut. Alternatively, Trump could illegally choose to impound funds (not spend what Congress has appropriated), like he is currently doing with USAID programs, Trump knows full well that the ability to actually restore something quickly erodes with time.]

“This CR is not perfect, but a shutdown would be worse,” Golden said. “Even a brief shutdown would introduce even more chaos and uncertainty at a time when our country can ill-afford it. Funding the government is our most basic obligation as members of Congress. My vote today reflects my commitment to making tough choices and doing my job for the people of Maine.” [This is absolutely true.]

[Now comes the list of sweeteners in the CR that are specifically directed to his district as the quid pro quo for his vote and things that no one could argue about as good things like disaster relief. But a clean resolution without ANY changes to the prior funding levels would have been far more palatable. ] The CR includes several defense-related provisions Golden fought for on the House Armed Services Committee, such as $7.951 billion for DDG-51 funding, which accommodates a third ship in FY25, slated to be built at Bath Iron Works [in Maine]; $83.2 million in advance procurement funding for DDG-51s in FY26; and

The CR also includes:

• increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration[Maine has a border with Canada];

• increased funding for disaster relief ;

• increased funding for operational expenses at national parks, including Acadia [in Maine];

• extended telehealth flexibility for Medicare; and

• advance funding for state Medicaid grants and Aging and Disability Services Programs.

Overall, the CR increases overall defense spending by $6 billion while cutting nondefense spending by $13 billion, relative to current spending levels. [This is for fY2025 only. The immediate job at hand is to keep the government funded. It is not to front-run side deals on specific detailed appropriations. All those decisions should be made on an equal basis during that detailed budget negotiation. That is the message that Hakeem Jeffries totally failed to get across. If he had, Golden would have stayed in the fold. But see below.]

Golden also pushed back against Democratic Party messaging gimmicks related to the CR, particularly the claim by some Democrats that the CR cut funding for veterans, based on the CR not including advance funding for the next fiscal year.

“There are no cuts to veterans care in the period covered by this bill, and we have six months to ensure funding continues into the next fiscal year,” Golden said. “To say this bill contains cuts is, at best, a misreading that creates unnecessary fear among veterans. At worst, it’s the adoption of the same cynical GOP political tactics that Democrats have rightfully denounced — using misdirection to justify a vote. This may seem politically expedient, but it only lowers us to a level we shouldn’t accept.” [This and the previous paragraph are where Golden breaks ranks and chastises his colleagues for deceit. If his allegations are true, he is right. Democrats cannot indulge in any messaging gimmicks because it destroys what should be their two main messaging points for the midterms—We will never lie to you. We will do what will benefit the average American.]

The Benefit Behind What Golden Did

Jared Golden is not an idiot. He may well have done this to boost his mid-term re-election prospects since he is a Dem in a rural red-leaning district. But in the process, he did not diminish the chances of other Democrats.

There is a way more significant good he did yesterday. He moved the continuing resolution to the Senate where Democrats have far more power, because the CR needs 60 votes to pass there. Republicans have only 53 votes in the majority. He caused that to happen in the quickest way possible.

If Golden and Jeffries engineered this, kudos to them. Johnson purposely engineered the ridiculously tight time frame to box out Democratic input and to push the government to shutdown. You can be sure this will happen again in late September.

What Republicans Really Want

What do the Republicans really want by going for a CR through September after all the talk about enacting the “mandate” in Trump’s first hundred days? It is more than just cover for their dysfunction and lack of a mandate. It is to create chaos. Because they think they have a better shot at remaking government according to the Project 2025 image if the American people are distracted and worrying about putting bread on the table.

Republicans would have gotten political advantage if the CR failed in the House and they could blame it on Democrats for causing a shutdown. If you don’t think chaos is the main objective, why is Trump stirring the pot with the on-and-off tariffs at exactly this point in time, even when it is causing the stock market to drop? It is not dementia or whim or Trump just seeing how far he can go with his demands for fealty. It is about layers of distraction to hide all the moves towards authoritarianism. It’s to cover the deportation of a legal immigrant over free speech issues (Trump said it would be the first of many), the attack on law firms who represent Trump's “enemies” and effectively deny the right to counsel, and the refusal to obey judicial orders on restoration of funding that he illegally impounded.

On to the Senate

Jared Golden got the CR to the Senate with 3 days left before a shutdown. Because passage requires 60 votes, seven Democrats have to vote to get the CR passed, so there must be some bipartisan horse-trading. Thune is more likely to deal. Of course, the wild card is whether Trump would refuse to sign the CR because it was “very , very unfair.”

At this point, there is no way, given the time, to revise the changes in funding levels that passed the House. In previous posts, I discussed three imperatives that Democrats have to push for to avoid Trump being able to unilaterally gut funding for the safety net over the next six months without going through Congress. These are what Democrats have to achieve in the Senate. When the House and Senate versions are reconciled, requiring another vote in the House, Golden and enough Dems would have to vote for it to ensure passage. Keep the Democrats’ goals in mind: to avoid a shutdown, and limit Trump’s ability to make cuts in the safety net over the next 6 months. The three imperatives are:

• Raise the debt ceiling by only a small fraction of the $4 trillion so Trump cannot get enough to enact the tax cut for billionaires.

• forbid sequestration of funds so Trump and Vought cannot create a phony emergency to allow them to redirect funds

• forbid illegal impoundments of funds by Trump

The status of these three issues in the version of the resolution currently posted on Congress’ website as of 3:10 am 3/12/25, with status indicated as passed by the House, is below.

• SEC. 2001. Reconciliation in the House of Representatives.

  (c) Increase in statutory debt limit.—The Committee on Ways and Means shall submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction that increase the statutory debt limit by $4,000,000,000,000. [This is over 10 years and is what was in the previous version of the resolution. It is what Trump wants so he can extend the current tax cuts for corporations and millionaires.]

• The explicit language about sequestration in an earlier version of the resolution appears to have been removed. According to the Congressional Research Office Sequester FAQ there are 3 laws that have been enacted that control the process of sequester. Most importantly, “Many programs are exempt from sequestration, such as Social Security and Medicaid. In addition, special rules govern the sequestration of certain programs, such as Medicare.11 These exemptions and special rules are found in Sections 255 and 256 of the BBEDCA, as amended, respectively.”
  At the very least, Democrats should amend the CR to include a reminder about what cannot be changed through the sequester and message that to Americans in the most forceful way. The Senate is the best venue to have this debate.

  This is a relevant and complicated issue, the devil is in the details, and the media are ignoring it. I don’t have the time, energy, or chops to delve further into this today. But I am absolutely sure that any tool that Trump can use to create chaos will be put in his hands by Russell Vought.

• There is no language regarding the illegality of impoundment in the CR. It is clear that House Republicans are so cowed by Musk’s resources to primary them that they have not challenged Trump’s illegal impoundments of congressionally approved appropriations and Congress’ constitutionally mandated sole power of the purse. But they will have to go along with a Senate version because if they don’t, they become the spoilers causing the shutdown ahead of the midterms when they are all up for re-election. This is a point in time where Democrats in the Senate have the maximum amount of leverage to address this while they are in the minority.

The Bottom Line

In some sense, the real goal for Democrats should be to force Trump to sign a CR that explicitly states the limits of his powers with regard to the budget. That would bolster the arguments to restrain him in the inevitable court cases that will arise from his illegal actions. Whatever they can do legislatively to bolster arguments about the sanctity of constitutionally mandated congressional powers have to be made now. SCOTUS is watching.