On the first day of the government shutdown, the White House on Wednesday insisted that President Trump wanted to fix the health care system — the very issue that Democrats in Congress have said is their top priority.
White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance, said that Mr. Trump was open to Democratic leaders’ suggestions for improving access to health insurance. But they were adamant that the shutdown was not needed to meet that goal.
“We need to reopen the United States federal government, because people are going without pay,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “Then we can discuss this very important issue of health care that the president absolutely wants to fix.”
Democrats on Wednesday were also keenly focused on health care, saying they had voted against the Republicans’ budget bill because they were seeking to keep health care costs from ballooning for millions of Americans, including in states that Mr. Trump won last year.
The tug of war over which side cares more about health care speaks to the issue’s political potency. Mr. Trump has made lowering health costs a key part of his agenda, and Democrats appear to see an opening to rein in the White House and preserve a set of subsidies that help millions of Americans pay for coverage.
Republicans have tried to drive their message by repeating the false assertion that Democrats were shutting down the government to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants. Hours before the shutdown on Tuesday, Mr. Trump held two Oval Office events promoting health policy actions — one announcing a deal the administration made with the drugmaker Pfizer for the company to lower prices it charges to state Medicaid programs, and another on accelerating research into children with cancer.
“If Democrats actually cared about health care, they would applaud the actions taken by President Trump,” Ms. Leavitt said on Wednesday.
Democrats are holding out on voting for the spending bill, hoping to extend Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, and to reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that were part of legislation Mr. Trump signed into law in July.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said he believed that his party had a winning message.
“We are going to be fighting everywhere on TV stations like yours, in the social media, in picketing, in protesting, in emails, in every way,” he said on Wednesday on “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC show. “And when the average American says, ‘Why the heck did I get a bill that raises my health care costs, doubles them,’ we’re going to be pointing out it’s the Republicans who did it.”
The shutdown comes as both parties attempt to explain why scores of government jobs could be cut, and why critical services could come to a halt.
The White House has launched an aggressive effort to blame Democrats for the shutdown, even using government websites to disparage the party. Officials have also attempted to use another key issue for Mr. Trump’s base — immigration — to bolster their claims that Democrats were prioritizing undocumented immigrants over American citizens.
On Wednesday, it sent out a powerful surrogate to carry its message to the public.
Speaking to reporters from the White House briefing room, Mr. Vance complained that Democrats had positioned themselves as champions of health care, but had not supported Mr. Trump’s efforts.
“Democrats say that they care a lot about lowering health care costs, and yet, when the president took historic action to work with the drug companies to lower prescription drug prices, the Democrats did nothing to help us,” Mr. Vance said.
He added: “What they have done instead is to shut down the government, because we won’t give billions of dollars to health care funding for illegal aliens.”
Mr. Vance said that Democratic leaders had proposed ideas for improving health care access that Mr. Trump would consider, but that it was wrong to force a shutdown until the president agreed to them.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump did not appear publicly and did not directly address the shutdown, except to attack Representative Maxine Waters of California — a frequent Democratic target of his — on social media.
The White House used the press briefing room to play clips of Democrats criticizing previous shutdowns. As the day came to a close, the screens played on loop an A.I.-generated video that Mr. Trump posted on social media earlier this week mocking Mr. Schumer and depicting Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, who is Black, as a Mexican.
Mr. Jeffries called the video racist, while Mr. Vance on Wednesday defended it as “funny.”
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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