If you’re losing a battle against an enemy but have a sword in your hand, it should go without saying that you should use that sword to defend yourself. But we’re going to say it anyway for the sake of Senate Democrats.
Yesterday, the House voted to pass a six-month funding bill – a “continuing resolution” – to prevent the government from shutting down this Saturday, March 15th, at midnight. All Republicans voted to pass it, except for Rep. Thomas Massie (KY-04), while all Democrats voted against it, except for Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02).
While we recognize the importance of federal agencies having uninterrupted funds to continue their essential work, House Democrats were right yesterday to oppose Republicans’ short-term funding bill. It empowers Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) to continue to wreak havoc throughout the government, giving them unchecked leeway in deciding how to spend certain funds. It also sneakily cuts the last $20 billion in enforcement funding that the IRS received through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Now the bill moves to the Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to overcome the filibuster. Senate Republicans control 53 seats, but Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has already made clear that he will vote against the measure. This effectively means that, as of this writing, Republicans will need at least eight of their Democratic colleagues to go along with them. In short, while Republicans have total control of the White House, Senate, and House, in reality, Democrats are in the driver’s seat this time around.
Senate Democrats haven’t made any official decisions as to how they will handle the bill, but reporting from March 12th revealed that a number of them are considering caving to Republicans and voting to pass it. Specifically, while they concur with House Democrats that the legislation is “horrible,” they want to avoid the optics of being responsible for a government shutdown that could last for weeks, especially while workers are already suffering at the hands of cuts from DOGE and Trump’s tariffs. They are even reportedly considering procedural gimmicks that would let Republicans pass the bill without Democratic votes, giving Trump his win while pretending that they opposed it.
What Senate Democrats are ignoring, however, is that a government shutdown would arguably be preferable to what would unfold if Republicans get their way with this bill. If Democrats cave and allow this legislation to pass, they will be complicit in both DOGE’s attacks on the federal government and allowing the ultra-rich to dodge their taxes. But, by rejecting this disastrous continuing resolution, Democrats can slow down Trump’s tax agenda (which will overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy and corporations) and roll back the attacks on the federal government launched by Elon Musk and DOGE, who, let’s be honest, have already taken to shutting down critical parts of the government on their own.
While it’s not getting as much attention, killing the GOP bill, even at the expense of a government shutdown, would also give a lifeline to the IRS. In 2022, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated billions in desperately-needed new funds to the IRS. In a short time, that critical infusion of funds helped the IRS to, among other things, collect over $1 billion in back taxes from thousands of millionaire tax cheats; hire nearly 7,000 new customer service representatives who answered a million more calls in the 2024 tax filing season over the year prior; and launch Direct File, a free, online e-filing system that has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the public. If Republicans successfully pass their continuing resolution with support from Senate Democrats and the final $20 billion that the IRS received through the Inflation Reduction Act is cut, all of this progress will have been for naught and the agency will essentially return to ground zero.
Republicans are so hellbent on destroying the IRS that they haven’t stopped at budget cuts, though. When Elon Musk is not busy running commercials for Tesla outside the White House, he’s hamstringing every federal agency he can get his hands on, and that unfortunately includes the IRS. Last month, the Trump administration fired 6,700 probationary IRS employees, many of whom reportedly worked in the Large Business and International division which audits wealthy households and companies with more than $10 million in assets. Reports have also revealed that the administration intends to cut the agency’s 90,000 workforce by as much as half and lend IRS workers to the Department of Homeland Security to assist with immigration crackdowns.
Here’s a hard truth: if Elon Musk and DOGE want to cut waste and improve “government efficiency” as they claim, they would be fighting tooth and nail to protect the IRS. Unlike with other federal agencies, when you cut funding and staff at the IRS, you ultimately end up with less revenue. This is because, for every $1 the agency spends on audits, they collect $6 back; and for every $1 the IRS spends auditing wealthy households and corporations, they get a whopping $12 return. If the IRS had sufficient funding, it would undoubtedly go a long way in closing the nation’s estimated $700 billion tax gap, i.e. the difference between taxes paid and taxes owed. It would also particularly help to crack down on high-income tax cheats, as the top 1% of earners alone are responsible for no less than $160 billion of the tax gap.
But funding the IRS involves more than just questions of fiscal responsibility. It’s also about upholding law and order. Anyone who evades taxes is a criminal, plain and simple. And anyone who helps others to evade taxes is a criminal apologist – again, plain and simple. Republicans can call themselves “the party of law and order” all they want, but by actively aiding and abetting ultra-wealthy tax cheats through their budget and staffing cuts at the IRS, they prove that they’re anything but.
In an opinion piece for The New York Times last month, James Carville, a longtime Democratic political operative, argued that Democrats should “roll over and play dead” amidst all the chaos that Republicans are wreaking across the government. With the stakes so high, this sort of thinking is sorely misguided. Democrats have arguably been doing nothing but rolling over and playing dead these last few years, even when they’ve been in power, and it’s gotten them nowhere and seriously hurt working people in the process. They played dead in Michigan last month when they, despite having control of the governorship and the Senate, needlessly compromised with Republicans in preserving the state’s tipped minimum wage. They played dead when they had control of the White House, Senate, and House between 2021 and 2023 and failed to do things like raise the federal minimum wage or close the carried interest loophole. And now, despite having the upper hand in the current negotiations over the continuing resolution, Senate Democrats are about to play dead once again and go along with Republicans in passing it.
Democrats need to stop making the same mistake over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Before it’s too late, Senate Democrats need to come together, grow a conscience, and use the sword that they’ve been gifted in this moment to defeat Republicans’ funding bill and protect working people from the growing power of ultra-wealthy, tax-dodging oligarchs.