Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have sent a letter to President Donald Trump requesting a meeting to discuss a path forward to keep the government open past the September 30th government funding deadline.
“With the September 30th deadline fast approaching, Republicans will bear responsibility for another painful government shutdown because of the refusal of GOP congressional leadership to even talk with Democrats,” Schumer and Jeffries wrote in the letter. “As a result, it is now your obligation to meet with us directly to reach an agreement to keep the government open and address the Republican healthcare crisis.”
Senate and House lawmakers left town yesterday after the Senate rejected a clean stopgap funding measure that had already passed in the House and that would keep the government open through November 21st. The resolution needs 60 votes to pass the Senate and on Friday, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., was the only Senate Democrat who voted in favor.
That measure would give appropriators more time to finish the 12 full-year government funding bills for all government agencies.
A competing measure proposed by Senate Democrats also failed to advance on the Senate floor with members voting along party lines.
The proposal would have funded the government through Oct. 31 and would permanently extend Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, plus reverse Medicaid cuts enacted in the GOP-backed domestic policy package that Trump signed earlier this year. The Democratic-backed measure also would have restored funding cuts to public media that the Trump administration enacted earlier this year.
Members of the Senate are not scheduled to return to Washington until September 29th, and House lawmakers are not slated to come back until October.
“At your direction, Republican congressional leaders have repeatedly and publicly refused to engage in bipartisan negotiations to keep the government open. Notwithstanding the fact that the partisan Republican spending bill has been defeated, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate have skipped town and abdicated their responsibility to fund the government,” Schumer and Jeffries also wrote to the president.
In response to a request for comment on the letter, a White House official said in a statement that, “Dems walked away from a bipartisan negotiation on the [continuing resolution]. This letter shows desperation.”
If lawmakers don’t reach a deal by September 30th, the federal government will shut down, closing all but essential services and putting most federal employees out of work for the duration of the halt.
On Friday in the Oval Office, Trump blasted Senate Democrats who voted against the Republican-led measure, predicting that the government would shut down “for a period of time.”
“The Republicans want to keep government open. But in the Senate, we have 53 Republicans total, and we need 60 votes. That means we need Democratic votes. I want to thank Senator John Fetterman, he wants to keep the country open,” the president said, adding later that Democrats, “actually dislike our country greatly. So they want to shut down the country.”
Trump said that Republicans will “continue to talk to the Democrats.”
“But I think we could very well end up with a closed, a closed country for a period of time,” he added.
The president earlier this month urged Republican leaders in Congress — Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson — not to engage in negotiations with members of the opposing party on a stopgap spending bill.
“We have to get Republican votes, that’s all,” he told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” adding that Republicans shouldn’t “even bother” with Democrats.
On Friday, after the Senate votes failed, Thune blasted Schumer and other Democrats for being “unserious” about government funding.
“They’re trying to use what they think is leverage to get a bunch of stuff done that’s never going to happen,” Thune said. “I mean, can you imagine anything in that bill that they sent that we voted down today, passing in the Republican House of Representatives? Absolutely not.”
Thune condemned the Democrats for trying to put healthcare policy on a continuing resolution and said that Republicans kept the government funded during the last Democratic presidential administration under former President Joe Biden.
“We didn’t take it hostage or hijack it to try and do some colossal list of liberal, you know, wish list type priorities and policies,” Thune said.
The Senate majority leader added that he’s “been available now for weeks,” to negotiate but that Democrats prioritize “satisfying, I think, their very leftist base.”
Thune also said that following the Senate’s recess, they’re prepared to “vote on a bill already passed by the House, ready to be signed by the President, all it takes is a handful of Democrats to join the Republicans.”
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