The top House Democrat signaled that his party is readying to blame Republicans as the threat of a government shutdown grows larger by the day.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., held a news conference on Wednesday where he said Democrats were ‘ready to get to work, ready to meet with anyone, any time, any place in order to avoid a painful Republican-caused government shutdown.’
At the same time, he restated that Democrats would not accept a GOP-led plan to keep the government funded at roughly current levels through Nov. 21, dismissing the measure as a ‘partisan exercise.’
‘Republicans have clearly demonstrated they want to shut the government down throughout this process,’ Jeffries 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.’
The House passed a short-term extension of current federal funding levels, called a continuing resolution (CR), last week. The vote fell largely along party lines, with just one Democrat crossing the aisle in the measure’s favor.
An effort to consider the bill in the Senate hours later was scuttled when most Democrats, along with two Republicans, opposed a vote to begin debating the measure.
Now both parties are blaming one another for a potential shutdown – which could hit at midnight on Oct. 1 if a deal is not passed in both chambers by then.
Republicans are accusing Democrats of recklessly pushing for a shutdown and making unworkable demands in exchange for keeping the government open.
‘REMINDER: House Republicans have already done the job of passing a clean, bipartisan bill to keep the government open,’ Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement on X Wednesday. ‘Now it’s up to Senate Democrats – who have long said shutdowns are bad and hurt people – to vote to fund the American government, or shut it down because they want to restore taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens.’
Republicans have also pointed out that government funding levels have remained relatively steady since fiscal year (FY) 2024, when Democrats supported then-President Joe Biden’s spending priorities.
But Democrats, infuriated by being sidelined in discussions on the bill, have been pushing for the inclusion of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that are set to expire at the end of 2025 without congressional action.
Jeffries has also repeatedly made reference to Republicans’ ‘big, beautiful bill,’ conservative legislation that imposed new restrictions and work requirements on Medicaid coverage for certain able-bodied Americans. He and other Democrats have accused Republicans of ripping healthcare away from millions of people, while the GOP has insisted the system is getting reformed to work better for vulnerable Americans who need it.
A short-lived hope for bipartisan discussion was quickly scuttled on Tuesday – Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had been expected to meet with President Donald Trump this week to discuss federal funding.
Trump called off the meeting, however, accusing Democrats of making ‘unserious and ridiculous demands’ in their push for a compromise deal to avert a shutdown.
‘They must do their job! Otherwise, it will just be another long and brutal slog through their radicalized quicksand. To the Leaders of the Democrat Party, the ball is in your court. I look forward to meeting with you when you become realistic about the things that our Country stands for. DO THE RIGHT THING!’ the president said on Truth Social.
During his Wednesday news conference, however, Jeffries would not say exactly what he opposed in the bill – instead criticizing the process by which it was formed.
‘It’s partisan because it didn’t have the votes in the House in a bipartisan way. There was no conversation. There was no discussion. There was no effort to actually sit down and figure out what type of spending bill would meet the needs of the American people,’ Jeffries said.
‘The notion that we’re supposed to accept that this is a clean continuing resolution is a joke. It’s not. It’s dirty for a wide variety of reasons. I explained it repeatedly, and it continues the assault on the healthcare of the American people.’
He also argued against the point that Democrats approved those same spending levels last year, noting that a majority of his caucus opposed a bill in March that kept those levels extended through Sept. 30.
‘It’s very easy to take a look at the bill in December that was passed with bipartisan margins, and signed into law by then-President Joe Biden, and the bill in March that was jammed down the throats of the American people in a very partisan way and signed into law by Donald Trump,’ Jeffries said. ‘Don’t accept that idea that it’s the Biden spending numbers when the facts say exactly the opposite.’
Democrats introduced their own CR last week aimed at keeping the government funded through Oct. 31, while also reversing Republicans’ Medicaid changes and preventing Trump from making any cuts to funding allocated by Congress – both of which were panned as nonstarters by Republicans.