Congress was no closer to a funding solution on Wednesday as party leaders refused to hold meetings, increasing the likelihood of a government shutdown on Oct. 1.
With six days until the federal government funding expires, Democrats and President Donald Trump are demanding that the opposing party pass a short-term spending deal that will fund the government until Nov. 21.
DEMOCRATS RISK SHUTDOWN BLAME GAME WITH GOVERNMENT FUNDING HARDBALL
But those demands are being rejected by each party. Republicans and Trump argue that Democrats need to fall in line after losing the 2024 election, while Democrats insist any blame for a shutdown will fall on the GOP trifecta for not negotiating on healthcare concessions.
During a press conference on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Democrats are ready to work with “anyone, anytime, any place” to prevent a shutdown. He stressed that Republicans need to come to the negotiating table on healthcare, which Democrats say is in a crisis as the Medicaid reforms in the “big, beautiful bill” threaten coverage for millions of Americans.
But, he said, “an intentional decision was made by Republican leadership in the House and the Senate not to have a single conversation with Democrats. They’re not even pretending as if they want to find common ground.”
Republicans, who successfully passed a seven-week continuing resolution out of the House last Friday with little drama, argue Democrats want to add “poison pills” to legislation intended to allow appropriators to continue their work to pass all 12 bills to fund the government. Republicans have also pointed to the continuing resolution as extending spending levels that existed under former President Joe Biden, something Jeffries rebuffed during his remarks.
The spending deal hit a roadblock on Friday and died in the Senate, and lawmakers from both chambers of Congress went home without any plans for a deal. Trump agreed on Monday to meet with Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), but reversed course on Tuesday and canceled the meeting.
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” the president wrote on Tuesday and reshared in a post on Wednesday.
In the post, Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Jeffries and Schumer “if they get serious about the future of our Nation.” He laid out demands in his “letter” to the leaders, asking Democrats to abandon “radical left policies” such as “high taxes, open borders…and taxpayer-funded ‘transgender’ surgery,” which he said would “lead to the destruction of America.”
“To the Leaders of the Democrat Party, the ball is in your court,” Trump added. “I look forward to meeting with you when you become realistic about the things that our Country stands for.”
But Democrats are making no move to concede, a move that some Democratic strategists argue is a way to appease their base, who want to see Democrats in Washington use what little political power they have to push back against the Trump administration.
It remains to be seen who will be blamed for a shutdown. If the government shuts down, historically, voters tend to point fingers at the party in power, as Jeffries predicted on Wednesday.
“The country has been lectured all year about how Republicans are in charge,” the House minority leader said. “If the government shuts down, it will shut down because Donald Trump and Republicans in the House and the Senate have made that decision to intentionally inflict pain on the American people. …They have no solution. Republicans have no path forward. There is no viable bill.”
But this time around, as opposed to other spending deals, Republicans are mostly unified around the short-term continuing resolution and are not causing any delays due to intra-party infighting. The GOP argues that Schumer is the one standing in the way of funding the government because the 60-vote Senate threshold will require seven Democrats to join Republicans to push the bill forward.
Democrats, however, say they won’t throw their support behind a “dirty” and “partisan” bill — leaving the future uncertain as the parties stay at a stalemate.
When asked what would get Democrats on board with a spending deal, Jeffries said any agreement related to the Obamacare tax credits or other healthcare priorities would need to be “ironclad and in legislation,” not a handshake or verbal agreement.
“I have a very forward-looking, positive, and communicative relationship with Speaker Mike Johnson, but there’s no trust that exists between House Democrats and House Republicans at this particular point in time, given the fact that they’ve consistently tried to undermine bipartisan agreements that they themselves have reached,” Jeffries said.
The House canceled votes for Sept. 29 and 30, the last two days before the looming shutdown. Jeffries and the House Democratic caucus plan to hold an in-person meeting on Sept. 29, while Republicans have yet to announce whether they will remain in their districts or travel back to Capitol Hill.
REPUBLICANS PUSH LEGISLATION TO ELIMINATE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS
Johnson said in a post to X shortly after Jeffries’s press conference that Democrats only want to meet to “repeat their demands that we include FREE healthcare to illegal aliens…and a MASSIVE $3.5 TRILLION spending HIKE in a simple 7-week funding bill.”
“They are holding government funding hostage,” the speaker said. “If Democrats fail to pass our clean, nonpartisan, 24-page CR to keep the government open, the American People will know where the blame lies.”
