At the Washington Post, I look at the history of shutdowns over the last few decades and conclude they rarely achieve anything for the party that initiates them. They also rarely have lasting political consequences. They just impose hardship and shrink the economy:
The Democrats had ample warning that the shutdown was unlikely to deliver what they wanted. In 1995-1996, congressional Republicans refused to let government funding continue unless Democrats agreed to cut spending and reform federal programs. The Democrats refused, and won. In 2013, congressional Republicans stopped government funding in order to end Obamacare. Obamacare survived. In 2018-2019, Republicans tried to use a shutdown — the longest one until this time — to make Congress fund a border wall. They failed, and President Donald Trump had to settle for declaring an emergency to fund part of a wall without congressional approval.
Democrats shut down the government themselves, briefly, at the start of 2018. Their aim then was to make Republicans agree to grant legal status to people who came to the United States illegally as minors. That didn’t work, either.
(I didn’t mention it in the column, but they also probably raise federal spending.)
Congress should pass, and the president sign, legislation to take shutdowns off the table.