WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to meet with the top four congressional leaders at the White House on Monday, one day before the deadline to fund the federal government or face a shutdown.
The meeting involving House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune as well as House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was confirmed Saturday by a White House official and two other people familiar with the planning. They were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting that has not been announced.
“President Trump has once again agreed to a meeting in the Oval Office. As we have repeatedly said, Democrats will meet anywhere, at any time and with anyone to negotiate a bipartisan spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” Schumer and Jeffries said in a joint statement on Saturday night. “We are resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown and address the Republican health care crisis. Time is running out.”
The meeting was first reported by Punchbowl News.
The parties have been in a standoff for days as Democrats, namely in the Senate, have refused to offer the necessary votes to pass a funding measure that would keep the government open beyond Tuesday.
Absent any action, a shutdown would begin at 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Democrats had secured a meeting with Trump until Republican leaders intervened and the president called it off. But Schumer spoke privately with Thune on Friday, pushing the majority leader to get a meeting with Trump scheduled because of the approaching funding deadline, according to an aide for Schumer.
“As rank-and-file Democrats begin to question their leadership’s unsustainable position, Sen. Schumer is clearly getting nervous,” Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Thune, responded Saturday night. “There’s an easy way out, and they’ll get a chance to take it next week.”
Democrats, believing they have leverage, have insisted on key health care provisions in exchange for their votes. They want an extension of subsidies that help low- and middle-income earners purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are also insisting on reversing cuts to Medicaid that were included the GOP’s signature tax measure earlier this year.
Republicans say those demands are nonstarters and that they are willing to have a conversation with Democrats on those issues separate from government funding talks. The GOP is asking for a straight extension of current funding for seven weeks.
Earlier in the week, Johnson acknowledged he had encouraged Trump not to meet with the Democratic leaders.
“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 in his home state of Louisiana. “Of course, it might be productive at that point, but right now, this is just a waste of his time.”
And Thune, R-S.D., had said earlier in the week that he “did have a conversation with the president” and offered his opinion on the meeting, which he declined to disclose. “But I think the president speaks for himself, and I think he came to the conclusion that meeting would not be productive,” Thune said.
Democrats have expressed confidence that voters would blame Trump and Republicans for any disruptions in federal services, even though that’s not at all guaranteed.
Republicans, on the other hand, had been heading toward the work week with plans in the Senate to keep showcasing Democrats’ refusal to agree to the stopgap measure, while the House GOP planned to stay away from Washington in a show of their own unwillingness to engage Democratic alternatives.
That too, came with potential political drawbacks for House Republicans, as Democrats hammered them for being, as Jeffries said, “on vacation.”