And You Thought Schumer Was Upset
A mere whisper of taxpayer savings has Democrats struggling to keep their composure.

Several days after the Congressional Budget Office reported that the highly indebted United States Government ran up another trillion dollars of deficit spending in just the first five months of this fiscal year, senators are refusing to pass another spending bill without deep cuts to the federal bureaucracy. Just kidding. Democrats in the Senate are threatening to close the government unless Republicans agree to leave the bureaucracy completely undisturbed.
No, this column can’t explain the logic of that position, either. While taxpayers still yearn for some modest fiscal responsibility in Washington, the Senate minority is discussing how to prevent any of the government streamlining that voters endorsed only a few months ago.
And it was only Monday of this week when the Congressional Budget Office explained once again the size of the hole politicians are still digging with this year’s spending:

The federal budget deficit totaled $1.1 trillion in the first five months of fiscal year 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That amount is $319 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year. Revenues were $37 billion (or 2 percent) higher, and outlays were $356 billion (or 13 percent) higher.

The House-passed bill does almost nothing to change this disgraceful state of the fisc, but even though Republicans have agreed to keep spending recklessly, Senate Democrats are upset about the way some of the dollars may be spent—as well as the faint possibility that a few taxpayer dollars somewhere in federal budgets may somehow not be spent at all. Terrifying, right?
In the Washington Post Theodoric Meyer, Liz Goodwin and Marianna Sotomayor report:

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) is under growing pressure to unite Senate Democrats as his party agonizes — loudly and publicly — over whether to trigger a government shutdown in less than 36 hours, or side with Trump and his allies on a potentially unpopular bill.

Schumer announced Wednesday afternoon that not enough Democrats supported Republicans’ funding bill — known as a continuing resolution, or CR — to overcome a filibuster. The federal government is set to shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday unless lawmakers pass a bill to keep it open, leaving Democrats in a political quandary.

“We’re in a really terrible position,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) said Thursday at a Politico event.

Aishah Hasnie at Fox News reports on X from outside a meeting of Democratic senators, including the junior senator from New York:

[Kirsten Gillibrand] is screaming so loud we can all hear it through the thick wood doors…Keeps yelling at her colleagues about a shutdown.

Ms. Hasnie adds:

Obviously – press who heard it believes it was [Sen. Gillibrand] based on the voice. We could not *see* her.

Ms. Hasnie and colleagues report:

Gillibrand’s office said it could not confirm she was the person screaming when reached by Fox News Digital.

That’s not a denial but perhaps we shouldn’t jump to conclusions on the identity of the backroom howler. It’s also possible that a second screamer theory could emerge.
Congressional tantrums aside, does any of this Beltway angst come close to the outrage taxpayers feel at being treated in this manner? Niall Ferguson recently observed in the Journal what happens historically to countries that allow the costs of government debt service to rise above defense spending, as has now occurred in the U.S.
From Habsburg Spain to Bourbon France to Czarist Russia and beyond, there are not a lot of happy endings.
Perhaps more screaming needs to be directed at U.S. lawmakers from outside those thick wooden doors.