WASHINGTON: House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are “marching the country” into a government shutdown over their refusal to meet with Democrats and strike a deal to save health care funding from cuts.
Jeffries told the Associated Press in an interview late Friday that he remained hopeful Congress could reach an agreement to prevent a federal funding lapse next week, ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline.
But with Republicans having canceled next week’s House voting session and Trump canceling his meeting with the Democratic leaders this week, he said, “the onus is on Donald Trump to show some presidential leadership.”
“Donald Trump and Republicans are chaos agents,” Jeffries said. “At moments in time that require stable, presidential leadership, Donald Trump is incapable of providing it.”
This shutdown, not the nation’s first, could be more difficult. Trump’s budget office this week ordered federal agencies to prepare a mass firing of federal workers, rather than the typical temporary employee furlough, if the federal government were to close.
The Republican leaders, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, say a shutdown can still be avoided if Democrats drop their demands. Before leaving town, House Republicans approved legislation that would keep the government funded into November, as Congress works to finish up its regular appropriations work. But that measure failed in the Senate, as did a Democrat alternative that included the health care funds.
“It’s my hope that we can find resolution over the next few days and avoid a government shutdown,” Jeffries said.
The Democratic leader, who is in line to become the House speaker if Democrats regain the majority in next year’s midterm elections, has become the party’s chief messenger in the high-stakes funding fight. The Democrats are confronting restive voters demanding that they stand up to the Trump administration and quit funding the White House’s agenda.
Trump may not say Jeffries’ name out loud — the Democratic leader said he was informed recently that in the past decade, since Trump entered politics, the Republican president has not mentioned the Democrat from Brooklyn – but Jeffries this week repeatedly name-checked him.
“Donald Trump, Get back to Washington, DC.,” Jeffries said earlier at the US Capitol, as the president attended the Ryder Cup in New York. “Why are you at a golf event right now? And the government is four days away from closing. That’s outrageous.”
After Trump abruptly canceled the planned meeting with him and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Jeffries said at the Capitol, “Why did you back out of the meeting, bro?”
Jeffries told his colleagues on a private conference call on Friday with House Democrats to “stay the course.”
Democrats are fighting to shore up health care funding, and in particular to prevent the expiration of enhanced subsidies, put in place during the COVID-19 crisis, that helped Americans pay for insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Without action, the boosted subsidy will lapse, risking premium spikes for millions of Americans nationwide.
Republicans have said Democratic demands to roll back the Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s big tax cuts and spending bill that Trump signed into law this summer are a nonstarter. And the GOP leaders have said talks on the ACA subsidies can wait until the end of the year, when they are set to expire.
“House Democrats are united,” Jeffries said. “Donald Trump and the Republican Party are marching the country into a painful government shutdown because they do not want to address the health care crisis that they created.”
The Republican congressional leaders believe Democrats are heading toward a political cliff.
“They’re walking in a trap they all set for themselves,” Johnson, of Louisiana, said during an interview on the Moon Griffon radio show in his home state.
Johnson acknowledged he encouraged Trump not to meet with the Democratic leaders this week after the White House had already agreed to Thursday’s scheduled meeting. Trump abruptly pulled out.
“He and I talked about it at length yesterday and the day before. I said, look, when they get their job done, once they do the basic governing work of keeping the government open, as president, then you can have a meeting with him,” Johnson said on the Mike & McCarty Show. “Of course, it might be productive at that point, but right now, this is just a waste of his time.”
Trump has been here before. During his first term, the country endured the longest shutdown, some 35 days over the 2018-19 winter holiday season, as lawmakers refused his demand for funding to build a promised US-Mexico border wall.
Before that, the government shut down for more than two weeks in 2013, during the Obama administration, over failed Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Jeffries expects this shutdown, if it happens, would end as those past ones did, he said.
“At the end of both of those shutdowns, Republicans came to the conclusion that their position was unsustainable,” he said. “And in my view, that’s exactly what will take place this time around, if Republicans shut the government down because they want to continue to gut the health care of everyday Americans.”