It’s that time of year again. Republicans are not satisfied with the economic pain Joe Biden and the Democrats are already inflicting on the country by restarting student loan payments, kicking people off Medicaid, and canceling the expanded tax credit that dramatically cut child poverty and food insecurity. It’s not enough for the GOP that Biden already caved in May and agreed to cut spending, make it harder to get food stamps, and reduce funding for the IRS to enforce the tax code in exchange for not shutting the government down.

Predictably, Republicans want to cause even more economic distress for those who can least afford to bear it, and they’re willing to shut the government down to make sure that happens. A shutdown, which is looking more likely by the day, will not only cause immediate pain to hundreds of thousands of federal employees and millions of people who depend on government services — the GOP is also almost certainly unwilling to agree to a deal to keep the government running unless it cuts more money from already meager social programs.

A strongly pro–Donald Trump faction of House Republicans is leading the charge, most recently voting down a routine motion that would allow defense appropriations for the year to proceed. While a few of this crew have decried supposedly “woke” practices in the military, for the most part the defense budget isn’t the real target. Rather, they are trying to force concessions before negotiations even begin, using procedural maneuvers to prevent the House from doing business unless GOP leadership commits in advance to even more stringent budget cuts — a proposition that Democrats will surely reject.