So, the Democrats were between a rock and a hard place when it came to the continuing resolution that the Republicans had prepared for them. There honestly wasn’t an easy answer this time around. To understand why, let’s review a little bit about federal budgeting.

The federal budget, commensurate with its size, is quite complicated. Whereas state budgets are fairly straight forward — there is normally one budget (a “General Appropriation Act”) that funds the fiscal year, and various supplemental budgets as certain fiscal needs arise — the federal government divides its budgeting process up into twelve different segments, with separate budgets for various topic areas, such as defense, education, healthcare, and so forth. These 12 separate budgets do not have to be passed at the same time, even though the federal fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30.

The next thing to note about the federal budget is that the various budget bills are not subject to the normal filibuster rules. Since every budget eventually has to be passed, the Senate may not delay it permanently by filibustering the various budget bills.

The final thing to note is that when Congress cannot come to agreement on its various budget bills by the start of the fiscal year, it can pass a continuing resolution, which continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year (or with minor modifications). If it has no changes in spending, it’s called a “clean” resolution, and if it has some changes in spending it’s a “dirty” resolution. The changes are supposed to be minor, but what is considered “minor” is not subject to precise definition. Unlike a budget act, a continuing resolution can, in fact, be filibustered.

And this is the point we reached on Friday night when the Democratic leadership in the Senate had to decide whether or not to filibuster the dirty continuing resolution that the House had sent over to them by the slimmest of margins.

The “dirty” resolution included a $6 billion increase in defense spending and a $13 billion decrease in non-defense spending. 

That $13 billion represents just a shade over 0.2% of the $6.4 trillion federal budget (ignoring, for the moment, that only $1.7 trillion is “discretionary” spending). But even if we divide that amount by only discretionary spending, it still ends up being 0.765%.

In other words, not that much of the federal budget.

So, the question for Democrats was, which of these choices was more odious? In one corner, you had Chuck Shumer and a handful of Senators who thought it would be worse to have the government shut down; in the other corner, you had Hakeem Jeffries, AOC and Bernie Sanders, who thought it was more important not to accede to the changes in the Republican budget without a proper negotiation.

Either position is defensible.

On the Schumer side of the argument, Democrats were concerned (1) that they would be blamed for the government shutdown, (2) that Trump and his “Project 2025” acolytes would have more discretion to fire people and permanently shut the parts of government that they don’t like, and (3) that more people would get hurt during a shutdown.

On the Jeffries side of the equation the concern was that Democrats need to stand up in opposition and start to exercise their political muscles.

In this debate, I think I’m coming down on the Schumer side. Primarily because the Democrats don’t yet have any negotiating leverage. Things have to get much, much worse before Democrats have real leverage. And they’re getting there at a steady clip. But we’re not there yet.

There is a small possibility that Democrats could pick two House seats in Florida on April Fools Day, of all days. But both are in deep red districts (Florida’s 1st and 6th congressional districts) and are still unlikely pickups. However, if either of those districts goes Democratic, then we would have the indication that something real is happening on the ground. And the House becomes a more dangerous place for Republicans.

In any case, this continuing resolution now keeps the budget flowing until September 30th — so basically the end of the federal fiscal year —  at which point the economy may look very differently than it does today.