Opinion: Are Democrats actually the ones trying to shut down the government?

In the latest production from Congressional Kabuki Theater, senators blocked a bill (H.J. Res. 61) Thursday that would have kept the lights on at federal agencies until Dec. 11. Without new funding, all “non-essential” government offices and services are slated to shut down Oct. 1.

So, who’s trying to shut down the government, Democrats or Republicans?

The answer, naturally, depends on whom you ask. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Democrats of pursuing “a strategy of blocking funding for the government” in order to protect a political ally. That ally would be Planned Parenthood, which would have been barred from receiving any federal dollars under the stop-gap funding bill.

Democrats, on the other hand, accused Republicans of taking the government hostage in an attempt to cripple Planned Parenthood. The GOP has long opposed Planned Parenthood because of the abortions it provides (using dollars not collected from the federal government) at some of its facilities. But Republicans’ ire at the group surged this year after an anti-abortion group released undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood executives and associates discussing how they obtain organs from aborted fetuses for medical research.

The dividing lines on the issue blurred a bit Thursday because so many Republicans -- eight -- joined Democrats and independents voting to sustain the filibuster. It would be a mistake, however, to view those votes as a show of support for Planned Parenthood; instead, they reflected other calculations by senators with little love for the group.

So again, if the fight leads to a government shutdown, whom should you blame?

The Times’ editorial board pointed its collective fingers at Republicans, noting the similarity of the current situation to the failed effort to “defund Obamacare” that caused a two-week government shutdown in 2013. But some readers argue that it’s Democrats who are standing in the way of the vital funding bill, not Republicans.

That’s true, but Democrats didn’t pick this fight. The regular order of business in Congress is to pass a set of annual spending bills by Oct. 1 to fund the various agencies and programs that rely on year-to-year appropriations. When they can’t meet that deadline -- a common occurrence in recent years -- they pass a temporary spending bill called a continuing resolution to keep the government going at the previous year’s funding level. Such “CRs” typically sail through Congress because they’re not loaded down with controversial policy changes.

Why not use the CR to defund Planned Parenthood (or Obamacare), you ask? Because if enough people object, the government won’t get funded and agencies shut down. Deliberately putting something in a CR that more than 40 senators strongly oppose is setting up the CR to fail.

Put another way, it was Republicans who decided to tie the continued operation of government to the question of whether Planned Parenthood should receive Medicaid dollars. They took the hostage, they’re responsible for the consequences.

Feel free to debate the merits of Planned Parenthood all you like, but this fight isn’t new. The recent videos didn’t seem to persuade any of the organization’s supporters in Congress to flip to the other side. So the outcome Thursday wasn’t just predictable, it was a certainty.

The same would be true, by the way, if the CR somehow made it to President Obama’s desk and he vetoed it because of the Planned Parenthood issue. He’s made no secret about his position, going so far as to explicitly promise a veto if the measure wasn’t amended.

The politics might be different when the fight is over total spending levels in the coming fiscal year, which is the next battle looming. Obama has threatened to veto any spending bill that doesn’t lift the caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act. That’s a straightforward fight not over policy, but over budgets. And the inconvenient truth for Obama on this issue is that the “sequester” spending caps were proposed by the White House, albeit as a way to force a “grand bargain” on a long-term plan to reduce the deficit.

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