WASHINGTON: Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions.
If government funding legislation is not passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and non-exempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.
Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats so far have held firm. They are using one of their few points of leverage to demand that Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits.
“The meeting is a first step, but only a first step. We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday afternoon with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly that he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week.
“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.”
The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in the midst of a funding lapse.
“Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
Still, Democrats argued that Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows that he is feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any shutdown.
But to hold on to their negotiating leverage, Senate Democrats will likely have to vote against a bill to temporarily extend government funding on Tuesday, just hours before a shutdown — an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive.
The bill has already passed the Republican-controlled House and would keep the government funded for seven more weeks while Congress works on annual spending legislation.
Any legislation to fund the government will need support from at least 60 senators. That means that at least eight Democrats would have to vote for the short-term funding bill, because Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is expected to vote against it.
During the last potential government shutdown in March, Schumer and nine other Democrats voted to break a filibuster and allow a Republican-led funding bill to advance to a final vote. The New York Democrat faced fierce backlash from many in his own party for that decision, with some even calling for him to step down as Democratic leader.
This time, Schumer appears resolute.
“We’re hearing from the American people that they need help on health care and as for these massive layoffs, guess what? Simple one-sentence answer: They’re doing it anyway,” he said.
Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have subsidized health insurance for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year.
Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits, but want changes. Thune said Sunday that the program is “desperately in need of reform” and Republicans want to address “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits at a later date.
It remains to be seen whether the White House meeting will help or hurt the chances for a resolution. Negotiations between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders have rarely gone well, and Trump has had little contact with the opposing party during his second term.
The most recent negotiation in August between Schumer and the president to speed the pace of Senate confirmation votes for administration officials ended with Trump telling Schumer to “go to hell” in a social media post.
Trump also abruptly canceled a meeting that was planned with congressional leaders last week, calling Democrats’ demands “unserious and ridiculous.”
Schumer argued that the White House coming back to reschedule a meeting for Monday showed that “they felt the heat.”
US government shutdown draws closer as congressional leaders head to the White House
https://arab.news/4xnby
US government shutdown draws closer as congressional leaders head to the White House
- Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels
- Many government offices will be temporarily shuttered and non-exempt federal employees will be furloughed
European leaders expected to cement support for Ukraine amid Washington pressure to accept deal
- After Sunday’s talks in Berlin between U.S. envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian and European officials are set to continue a series of meetings
BERLIN: European leaders are expected to cement support for Ukraine Monday as it faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal.
After Sunday’s talks in Berlin between U.S. envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian and European officials are set to continue a series of meetings in an effort to secure the continent’s peace and security in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia.
Zelenskyy sat down Sunday with U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the German federal chancellery in the hopes of bringing the nearly four-year war to a close.
Washington has tried for months to navigate the demands of each side as Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.
Zelenskyy on Sunday voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia.
Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of the Donetsk region still under its control among the key conditions for peace.
The Russian president also has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.
Zelenskyy emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.
‘Pax Americana’ is over
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has spearheaded European efforts to support Ukraine alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said Saturday that “the decades of the ‘Pax Americana’ are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well.”
He warned that Putin’s aim is “a fundamental change to the borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders.”
“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop,” Merz warned during a party conference in Munich.
Macron, meanwhile, vowed Sunday on social platform X that “France is, and will remain, at Ukraine’s side to build a robust and lasting peace — one that can guarantee Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, and that of Europe, over the long term.”
Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.
