President Trump will meet with the four top congressional leaders at the White House on Monday, the day before a deadline to avert a government shutdown, the lawmakers said.
Congress faces a Tuesday deadline to fund the government, which will require lawmakers to agree on a spending measure that can win at least 60 votes in the Senate. But Republicans control only 53 seats and need support from Democrats, who have been demanding that G.O.P. leaders and Mr. Trump negotiate with them.
But even as leaders of both parties agreed to a meeting, it was unclear whether Mr. Trump intended to reach a bipartisan compromise or if he was summoning Democrats to press them to accept Republicans’ funding proposal.
In an interview on CNN, Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that the president was “always open to discussion.” But when pressed on whether Mr. Trump intended to negotiate a deal, Mr. Johnson sidestepped the question and accused Democrats of holding government funds hostage for “partisan demands.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Monday’s meeting was “only a first step” and emphasized the need for a bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded.
“If the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done,” he said. “But my hope is it’ll be a serious negotiation”
Republicans have been trying to advance a temporary funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, or C.R., that keeps federal spending levels flat. Such measures have become routine on Capitol Hill to avoid shutdowns, and Republicans have pointed out that they repeatedly agreed to such bills in the past.
Mr. Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leaders, have tied their support to securing funding to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, and to reversing the cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that Republicans made unilaterally over the summer.
“Our position is clear,” Mr. Jeffries said on Sunday in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “Cancel the cuts, lower the costs, save health care”
Mr. Trump has rejected Democrats’ funding demands as unreasonable. Last week, he canceled a planned meeting with Democratic leaders after a phone call with Mr. Johnson and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader.
Mr. Schumer told “Meet the Press” that he called Mr. Thune on Friday to press him to set up a meeting with Mr. Trump and the other congressional leaders, and that the White House agreed to the meeting on Saturday night. “I think they felt the heat, and they now want to sit down,” he said.
But Mr. Thune signaled that his position had not changed. He told NBC that he was open to discussing the insurance subsidies at a later date but that he still did not think it appropriate to address them in a stopgap measure to fund the government.
“Keep the government open, and then let’s have a conversation about those premium tax credits,” Mr. Thune said on “Meet the Press.” “I’m certainly open to that. I think we all are.”
Republicans’ stopgap bill would keep federal spending mostly at current levels through Nov. 21 and provide $88 million in emergency funding to bolster security for the members of the executive branch, the Supreme Court and Congress after the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thune both maintained on Sunday that the seven-week continuing resolution would give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan spending bills that would help them address the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“The choice remains the same,” Mr. Thune said in a statement. “Democrats can either vote for a clean, short-term, nonpartisan C.R. that prioritizes the American people, or they can choose a completely avoidable shutdown that prioritizes politics above all else.”
But Democrats have urged swifter action, saying that the subsidies need to be addressed before millions of Americans enrolled in plans under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, start to sign up for health care coverage in November.
And furious over the White House’s repeated efforts to cancel spending that Congress previously approved, they have suggested that bipartisan spending agreements also need safeguards to restrict the Trump administration’s ability to claw back such funding.
They have also condemned a recent threat by Trump administration officials to fire scores of federal employees during a shutdown, accusing the White House of trying to intimidate them into dropping their proposal.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
The post Trump to Meet With Congressional Leaders as Shutdown Deadline Looms appeared first on New York Times.
