With a government shutdown deadline just six days away, Republican and Democratic congressional leaders are doing plenty of talking — just not with each other. That leaves the path to avoid a shutdown entirely unclear.
In a sit-down interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats “definitely want to avert a shutdown” and blamed President Trump and Republicans for refusing to negotiate.
“We’re asking something very simple, Joe: for the president to sit down and talk with us, Schumer said. “You know, he’s not the king. He can’t just dictate what happens. He said he doesn’t need Democrats. Well, then he doesn’t know how to count because there are 60 votes in the Senate that you need to pass this [funding bill] and he’s got 53.”
Democrats are looking to extend higher Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that benefit more than 20 million Americans and have proposed rolling back Republican cuts to Medicaid and other programs. A permanent expansion of the subsidies would cost an estimated $350 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said last week, and would boost the number of people with health insurance by 3.8 million as of 2035.
Democrats have also pushed to restrict Trump’s efforts to withhold or cancel funding approved by Congress.
Trump on Tuesday canceled a meeting with Democratic leaders, saying he decided it could not be productive because Democrats’ demands are “unserious and ridiculous.” He reportedly backed out of the meeting after speaking Monday night with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who raised concerns that a White House meeting with Democrats could undercut GOP leverage in the current standoff.
“On the call, the GOP leaders told the president that Schumer was seeking a shutdown brawl with him, and they panned Democrats’ demand to make enhanced Obamacare subsidies permanent as essentially giving free health care to illegal migrants,” CNN reported.
Schumer said on MSNBC that he still hoped to have a meeting. “It’s so easy to just sit down and talk to us, and we know we’re not going to get everything, but he’s not even doing that,” Schumer said of Trump. “And the American people are going to say, ‘WTF? Why won’t he do that?’ There’s no good reason.”
Asked what happens now, Schumer said it’s up to Republicans. “They control the show. They have the presidency, they have the Senate, they have the House. So they’re in charge. And God forbid there’s a shutdown — which we don’t want — American people are going to know they’re in charge and say, ‘what the heck?’”
In a joint statement, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Trump of throwing “an unhinged temper tantrum” and said the canceled meeting makes it clear who would be responsible for a potential shutdown: “The American people will hold President Trump and Republican sycophants in Congress responsible.”
In an interview with CNN, Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged having a conversation with the president about the shutdown fight but said that Trump “draws his own conclusions” and had decided a meeting with Democrats wouldn’t be fruitful.
Thune said Democrats are looking to “hijack” the process of funding the government. “The Democrats’ requests are completely unhinged and unreasonable and unserious,” he said. “And if they want to have a serious conversation, I’m sure the president will be happy to do that, but at least right now what they’re asking for to keep the government open for seven weeks is over a trillion dollars in new spending and all kinds of policy riders that never go on continuing resolutions.”
The South Dakota senator also said he is open to negotiations about the Affordable Care Act subsidies but insisted that any such talks can’t be linked to a short-term funding bill and must include reforms. “This is a program that needs reform, but I think everybody is willing to sit down and talk about how to make that happen in a context where it should be discussed, not as a hostage to keep the government open,” Thune told CNN host Dana Bash.
As the two sides continued to point fingers, Jeffries pushed back on Thune’s criticisms. “No one is hijacking the process,” he told reporters. “Republicans decided to put forth a partisan spending bill that barely escaped out of the House and then went down in flames in the Senate. They have no solution. Republicans have no path forward. There is no viable bill. So the only path forward at this moment is for us to have a bipartisan conversation as to a spending bill that would actually meet the needs of the American people.”
Jeffries also slammed Johnson for canceling House votes on September 29 and 30, ahead of the deadline, saying that move demonstrates that Republicans have decided on a shutdown. He said Democrats will need more than verbal promises on any deal.
“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. “Any agreement related to protecting the health care of the American people has to be ironclad, and in legislation.”
Centrists look for a deal: Trump and some Republicans may feel they have the upper hand in a shutdown fight, given that they are only looking for a “clean” short-term funding extension and given the outsized megaphone the president has in any messaging battle. But many Republicans know that the Obamacare subsidy issue is an important one for them to address — and they really can’t leave it to the end of the year, when the subsidies expire. More than 20 million Americans face steep premium hikes with new rates set to kick in on or around November 1, when open enrollment begins.
Amid that backdrop, Politico reported Monday evening that centrists in the House Problem Solvers Caucus have started talks about a possible compromise that would extend the expiring subsidies while potentially limiting who can receive them. Some in the GOP have reportedly floated a $200,000 income cap — “a bare minimum demand for many Republicans,” Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill and Benjamin Guggenheim note.
Other Republicans have reportedly proposed tighter restrictions while some in the party want to eliminate the subsidies altogether.
Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has pushed back on GOP leaders’ contention that the subsidies can be dealt with in November or December, once government funding is extended. “That can’t happen,” Fitzpatrick reportedly told Politico last week. “We’re up against a real deadline. The rates are going to kick in probably Nov. 1. So we have October to get it done.”