Despite all of their past talk over the years about how devastatingly calamitous for the country even a temporary and partial government shutdown would be, the Senate Democratic leadership is now talking tough about doing exactly that by refusing to vote in support of a Republican-drafted and Trump-approved short-term spending bill.

On Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested that his caucus would vote against a House-passed continuing resolution to keep the government funded through September unless a number of partisan demands were immediately met, according to Breitbart.

However, Senate Republican Leader John Thune (R-SD), bouyed by the knowledge that Democrats would largely be saddled with the blame for a potential shutdown, essentially called Schumer's bluff by taking the necessary steps to schedule for Friday a critical procedural vote on the funding measure.

Thune calls Schumer's bluff

In a Wednesday afternoon floor speech, Sen. Schumer decried, "Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input -- any input -- from congressional Democrats."

"Because of that," he warned, "Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR," using the parliamentary term for the procedure to end debate or a filibuster with 60 votes and move on to a final simple majority vote.

Schumer further laid out a few alternative Democratic proposals, including a 30-day CR instead of the House-passed six-month measure, as well as an amendment to the GOP's CR that would prohibit President Trump from spending even a dollar less than what was appropriated and block the Department of Government Efficiency from continuing its efforts to root out and cut examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.

Yet, Breitbart noted that both of those proposals are essentially non-starters for Republicans, and Sen. Thune indicated that he is prepared to put Schumer and his Democratic colleagues on the spot by forcing them to vote for or against the original CR ahead of a deadline at the end of the week.

Indeed, just hours after Schumer issued what amounted to threats to cause a government shutdown over the weekend, Thune scheduled a cloture vote on the CR for Friday evening.

Schumer's tough talk intended to "save face," quietly allow for passage of CR

All of Sen. Schumer's tough talk on the Senate floor appears to have been empty, though, according to The Hill, which reported on Thursday that the Senate Democratic Leader's remarks were "designed to save face" and appease the party's base of rancorous leftist activists who want to deny any possible victories for President Trump and Republicans.

At the same time, however, inside sources say that Schumer has quietly given the more "centrist" members of his caucus permission to vote in support of the House-passed CR if they want to do so.

Given the Senate's 53-47 partisan split in favor of the GOP, as well as the fact that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has stated that he will oppose his party's CR measure on principled fiscal grounds, there would need to be at least eight purportedly "centrist" Democrats to cross the aisle and vote in favor of invoking cloture to end debate and advance to a final vote on the spending bill.

Breitbart noted that this predicament for Democrats is entirely of their own making, as they will now be compelled to either vote to cause a government shutdown that they'll largely be blamed for by most Americans or vote alongside Republicans to the benefit of President Trump, further enraging their already infuriated activist base.

Trump ups the ante for Democrats

Making that choice even tougher for Senate Democrats, per CNN, were comments made by Trump on Thursday during an unrelated White House event, in which the president opined, "If there’s a shutdown, it’s only going to be because of Democrats, and they would really be taking away a lot from our country, and from the people of our country."

"If they do a shutdown and ultimately that might lead to very, very high taxes, because we’re talking about a shutdown, we’re talking about getting to work immediately on the greatest tax bill ever passed," Trump said. "If we don’t open, the Democrats are stopping all of these good things that we’re providing. We’re providing the greatest package of benefits that this country has ever provided, and the biggest part of that is going to be tax cuts for the middle class, and for businesses -- small businesses, employers, people that hire people and jobs."