House Democrats are now toying with the idea of shutting down the government—not to save taxpayer money, not to reduce the deficit, but to stop Elon Musk and President Donald Trump from streamlining Washington’s bloated bureaucracy. That’s right, in their latest tantrum, Democrats are considering forcing a shutdown over the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump’s groundbreaking initiative to eliminate waste and rein in out-of-control federal spending.
The House faces a March 14 deadline to pass a spending bill, and Trump has already made his position clear: he wants Congress to pass a clean, temporary government funding bill to keep things running through September. But for Democrats, this isn’t about governance—it’s about power. They see the bill as a “tacit blessing” of DOGE’s spending cuts, and that’s got them in a full-blown meltdown.
One senior House Democrat aide told Politico that they refuse to “aid and abet” Musk and Trump’s efforts to curb government excess, particularly in healthcare. Another senior Democrat lawmaker was even more dramatic, declaring, “At some point, you’ve got to have a goddamn backbone.” Apparently, standing up for never-ending federal bloat is their definition of courage.
The real issue at play here is that Democrats cannot stand DOGE’s effectiveness. Trump put Musk in charge of slashing bureaucratic waste, and in just a few weeks, they’ve already gutted hundreds of millions in wasteful spending. Americans overwhelmingly approve of DOGE’s work, but Democrats, ever the champions of big government and cronyism, want to pull the plug before more of their sacred pet projects get the ax.
Now, they’re scrambling to secure guarantees that would prevent Trump and Musk from firing more bureaucrats or canceling more government programs—because heaven forbid we stop spending taxpayer dollars on redundant agencies and unnecessary projects. And they’re willing to hold the entire government hostage to make sure their swamp buddies keep their jobs.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, leading a slim Republican majority, is now faced with yet another Democrat-manufactured crisis. Last year, he had to rely on Democrat votes to get basic legislation passed. This time, Democrats are signaling they might not play along—because they’d rather let the government grind to a halt than allow Musk and Trump to continue their war on inefficiency.
A shutdown would force the furlough of hundreds of thousands of government workers and shutter so-called “nonessential” operations, like financial regulators and park maintenance. Of course, the last major shutdown in 2019—also under Trump—was over something that actually mattered: securing the border. This time? Democrats want a shutdown to protect the very bureaucratic rot that DOGE is eliminating.
This is the left’s playbook: when they can’t win at the ballot box, when their policies are exposed as failures, they turn to chaos and obstruction. Trump is proving that slashing government waste is possible—and the left is terrified. They’d rather see Americans suffer through a shutdown than admit that Washington can, in fact, be run more efficiently.
