WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and top congressional leaders are sitting down at the White House on Monday, Sept. 29, for a high-stakes meeting in hopes of avoiding a fast-approaching government shutdown.
The countdown is on with a midnight Oct. 1 deadline. Absent a deal, Trump’s administration will be tasked with maintaining “essential” government services such as the military and law enforcement, while “non-essential” functions like national parks will close or cut staffing.
As the clock keeps ticking, the political blame game has already begun. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” to accuse Democrats of waylaying efforts to pass a funding bill with a “laundry list” of partisan asks. Over on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said averting a shutdown “depends on the Republicans.”
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The pair’s comments prefaced their dialogue with Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The president abruptly canceled a meeting that had previously been set for Sept. 25 with the two Democratic leaders. Since then, both sides have continued to publicly dig in their heels.
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Congress and its leadership will have less than 48 hours before a deadline to avoid a government shutdown, which will start at 12:01 a.m. Oct. 1 if there isn’t a last-minute breakthrough.
The main sticking points for Democrats center on health care funding: They’re demanding reversals of funding cuts to Medicaid made by Trump’s recent tax bill, plus an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
That extension needs to be permanent, Jeffries told reporters on Capitol Hill just a few hours before meeting with Trump. It also needs to be “ironclad” in legislation − not a verbal commitment − he said.
“These people have been trying to repeal and displace people off the Affordable Care Act since 2010,” he said of Republicans. “On behalf of the American people, we’re supposed to simply take their word that they’re willing to negotiate? The American people know that would be a reasonable thing for us to do.”
Schumer, Jeffries’ counterpart in the Senate, signaled the White House meeting is unlikely to clinch any major deal, calling it a first step.
“You know, the meeting is a first step, but only a first step,” Schumer said on “Meet the Press.” “We need a serious negotiation. Now, 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. But my hope is it will be a serious negotiation.”
Republicans in the House of Representatives narrowly passed a short-term funding bill on Sept. 19 to fund the government through Nov. 21, but the bill fell short in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to avert the filibuster.
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“Chuck Schumer came back with a long laundry list of demands that don’t fit into this process,” Johnson said on CNN. “He’s going to try to shut the government down.”
Lawmakers in the House aren’t scheduled to return to take any votes until after the government potentially shuts down. In the meantime, Schumer and Thune are hoping to get senators to reconsider their own funding measures, which aren’t likely to pass.
