LAWLER LAYS IT ON THE LINE: Dems Are Playing Partisan Games with Government Funding

LAWLER LAYS IT ON THE LINE: Dems Are Playing Partisan Games with Government Funding

Rep. Mike Lawler sets the record straight in his latest op-ed: Democrats are hypocrites, and they're holding government funding hostage for their own political gain.

For years, Democrats have decried government shutdowns, acknowledging the harm they inflict on Americans. But now, they're hypocritically throwing their principles out the window to advance their out of touch agenda at the expense of seniors, veterans, and families across the country.

Read the full op-ed from Rep. Mike Lawler here or excerpts below:

Hypocrite Democrats are driving us off the government shutdown cliff
New York Post
Rep. Mike Lawler
September 24, 2025

For years, Democrats have thundered from every podium, press conference and Sunday show that any government shutdown is reckless, destructive and indefensible.

Whenever Congress hits a budget impasse over federal funding, Democrats have decried it as a "hostage situation."

They have said shutdowns hurt families, seniors, farmers, veterans and small businesses.

They have demanded compromise.

Now? Those same Democrats are suddenly just fine with plunging the American people into a shutdown - because it suits their political agenda.

[…]

Take Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In 2018, he declared, "We shouldn't shut down the government over a dispute."

"No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans," he scolded then.

Fast forward to today, and suddenly it's Schumer pounding the table, insisting it's his way or the highway.

Or former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in 2019 said, "There is no such thing as a good shutdown of government."

"The president cannot hold public employees hostage," she added.

Yet here we are, watching her party hold those same public employees hostage in pursuit of its extreme priorities.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is no different. Just last year, he lectured that "reckless" shutdowns mean "families will be hurt. Farmers will be hurt. Border security and border patrol agents will not be paid."

But now, as Democrats try to drive us off the shutdown cliff, Jeffries' hands are directly on the wheel.

Families, farmers, border agents - the very people he once pretended to champion - are suddenly expendable.

[…]

Nobody wins in a shutdown - least of all the hardworking families in New York's 17th District who depend on veterans' care, Social Security, Medicare and other essential government services.

A shutdown throws hundreds of thousands of families into limbo, with federal workers furloughed and paychecks put on hold.

[…]

That's why I've consistently fought to reach bipartisan agreements to keep the government open - even when it's meant standing up to the fringes of my own party.

It was wrong for Democrats in the House to force the government to shut down when Ronald Reagan was president, it was wrong when House Republicans forced a shutdown when Barack Obama was president, and it's just as wrong today for Democrats in the Senate to force a shutdown now that Donald Trump is president.

Neither party is without blame.

But I have always pushed for responsible appropriations, fiscal discipline and secure borders, while rejecting political gamesmanship that hurts the very people we were elected to serve.

Democrats once claimed to believe all that, too. Their own words prove it.

But their actions now tell a very different story.