With a March 14 deadline looming, New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, are floating the possibility of a government shutdown—not as a bargaining chip for lower spending, but as a means to block President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.
Booker, speaking on CNN, and Kim, appearing on NBC, suggested that Democrats could refuse to pass a spending bill, attempting to frame it as Republican obstructionism rather than a strategic move to preserve bloated government budgets.
“We are in a crisis right now, and Democrats will use every tool possible to protect Americans,” Booker claimed, according to The New York Times.
Kim echoed a similar stance, admitting that while he didn’t want a shutdown, Democrats might use it to pressure Trump. “We are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis,” Kim argued, seemingly preparing to blame Republicans should Democrats pull the trigger on a funding lapse.
However, a shutdown may not play out the way Democrats expect. Contrary to popular belief, the federal government never fully shuts down—Social Security checks still go out, military operations continue, and core law enforcement agencies remain active. What does happen is that hundreds of thousands of federal workers deemed “non-essential” are furloughed, shining a bright spotlight on how much of the government is, by its own definition, unnecessary.
A shutdown in 2013 revealed that only 6.6% of EPA employees were considered essential, according to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW). That same year, some 800,000 federal employees were placed on furlough—essentially admitting that a massive portion of the government workforce is not vital to day-to-day operations.
The classification of “essential” versus “non-essential” could become even more consequential under Trump’s presidency, particularly with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative scrutinizing federal spending with a fine-tooth comb.
During Trump’s first term, the government shut down twice—once in January 2018 and again in late 2018/early 2019—but the reality was far from the catastrophe Democrats predicted. The potential for another shutdown, particularly as a ploy to protect unnecessary spending, could backfire on Democrats, exposing inefficiencies in government agencies and raising uncomfortable questions about why certain programs continue to receive taxpayer funding.
And some of that funding is truly absurd. As The Daily Wire previously reported, U.S. taxpayer money has bankrolled DEI initiatives in Serbia, a DEI musical in Ireland, a “transgender opera” in Colombia, and a “transgender comic book” in Peru. If Trump and Musk’s efficiency team continue their audits, it’s not difficult to see why certain politicians might panic at the prospect of real oversight.
