Scoop: Why Dems didn't try to make Trump miss his DOGE deadline
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on July 17. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
House Democrats passed up what appeared to be a golden opportunity to block a bill codifying $9 billion in DOGE cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid. In leadership's telling, victory was never a real possibility.
Why it matters: That analysis may not be enough to ward off fierce backlash from the Democrats' grassroots base, which has been demanding lawmakers use every tool at their disposal to fight the Trump administration.
- While $9 billion is a comparatively paltry sum in a federal budget measured in trillions, targets like NPR and PBS hold great symbolic value for many of Democrats' core voters.
- Even among House Democrats, there wasn't total unanimity about either the legal or political reasoning leadership gave for not doing more to fight the bill.
What happened: There was considerable speculation that Democrats would employ a raft of delay tactics to force Republicans to vote on the rescissions package after a Friday deadline set by the Impoundment Control Act.
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) spoke for just 15 minutes ahead of the vote on the rescissions bill — nowhere near the nearly nine-hour speech he gave to delay the "big, beautiful bill" earlier this month.
- Democrats also opted not to bog down the House Rules Committee with amendments, instead introducing a handful of measures aimed at forcing the release of the Justice Department's files on Jeffrey Epstein.
- Ultimately, Republicans passed the bill just after midnight on Friday, nearly 24 hours before the deadline. Democrats unanimously opposed it, as did Reps. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), but that wasn't enough to stop it.
What we're hearing: House Democratic leadership communicated to its members Thursday night that pushing the vote past the deadline would not have the kind of kill-shot effect some believed, according to a half dozen House Democrats.
- Members were told that leadership consulted lawyers who said the deadline only applied to the Senate, allowing the upper chamber to pass the bill with a 51-vote threshold within a certain timeframe.
- Even if that weren't the case, lawmakers were told, the rescissions would only be invalid for the period between the deadline and when the bill passed the House — which would likely just be hours.
- That was in addition to speculation proffered earlier in the day that the Trump administration would simply ignore the deadline if it proved to be a meaningful legal impediment.
What they're saying: "House Republicans continue to robotically rubber stamp Trump's agenda and give it the force of law. The only people who didn't try to stop this parade of horribles are the so-called moderate House Republicans," Jeffries spokesperson Christie Stephenson told Axios in a statement.
- "In the event Senate Republicans had failed to advance Trump's rescissions bill within a 45-day window, the legislation would have lost its filibuster-proof privilege and required bipartisan support in order to become law."
- "Since Senate Republicans cleared the bill under 45 days, the writing was on the wall that this Republican Congress would pass this cuts bill into law by any means necessary."
What we're hearing: Not everyone was satisfied. In conversations both inside and outside a Thursday night Democratic caucus meeting, Rep. Josh Riley (D-N.Y.) pushed back on that analysis, according to multiple lawmakers familiar with his comments.
- A lawyer who previously served as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Riley argued that Democrats should delay the bill anyway to create standing for a lawsuit against the rescissions, the lawmakers told Axios.
- Asked for comment, the New York Democrat told Axios: "I haven't had a chance to talk to the leader about it. I don't know whose staff I was talking to, but I talked to some folks."
- Some lawmakers argued there was a political case for delay as well, with Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), a progressive member of Democratic leadership, telling Axios: "I think every little thing is part of a bigger picture. It's a puzzle being built — you've got to stop every piece."
Yes, but: Most House Democrats who spoke to Axios deferred to leadership's analysis, with even some senior House progressives saying they believed the political case for delaying the bill was as flimsy as the legal argument.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the former Progressive Caucus chair, told Axios: "We have a very clean message right now coming out of this about what this means for appropriations, congressional power, plus the damage that it's doing to USAID and public broadcasting."
- "I just think it gets all messy if you try to make it a procedural argument," she said.
- Said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.): "If there's a viable way to do that, I'm sure that there's a great appetite for it. But if there's not, we need to fight the battles we can win."
Editor's note: This article has been updated.
