President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Republican leaders in the House and Senate had a simple message as Washington barrels toward a government shutdown: It’s all the Democrats’ fault.
The government runs out of money at midnight on Tuesday. As it stands, the House of Representatives has not been in session since two Fridays ago when Republicans passed a continuing resolution.
“We have disagreements about tax policy, but you don’t shut the government down,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The meeting came after Trump had initially canceled a meeting with Schumer and Jeffries, whom he called “Minority Radical Left Democrats.” After Monday’s meeting, Vance proceeded to attack the minority party.
“We have disagreements about health care policies, but you don’t shut the government down,” he said. “You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops, to not have essential services of government actually function. You don’t say the fact that you disagree about a particular tax provision is an excuse for shutting down the people’s government and all the essential services that come along with it.”
Democrats do not have many options for leverage considering Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate. But given that a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution requires 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, Democrats hope to use health care as leverage.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration expanded subsidies for the health care marketplace under the Affordable Care Act. The Inflation Reduction Act extended those subsidies for two additional years. Those expanded subsidies expire at the end of the year.
But Republicans say that Democrats are being unreasonable and are just trying to appease their left-wing base.
“Senator Schumer is afraid will no longer be the Democratic leader,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Independent on Monday.
Schumer faced harsh criticism in March after he joined Republicans to prevent a government shutdown and voted for a continuing resolution. His approval numbers plummeted precipitously in his home state of New York and the vote triggered discussions of a possible primary challenge by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2028.
Many Democrats now think they have a chance of winning concessions by focusing solely on health care, a policy where they historically have an advantage over Republicans.
“The only reason we’re in this situation is that Schumer is trying to protect his hide, and he’s scared of the left wing,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters on Monday.
Flirting with a government shutdown is a constant tightrope. It almost never wins the concessions that the party threatening a shutdown demands.
In 2018, Democrats briefly triggered a government shutdown to get relief for DREAMers, the group of undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. Later that same year, Trump triggered a government shutdown to secure funding for his desired Mexico border wall.
But Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, had a simple response for people who said the Democrats would own a government shutdown this time around.
“Get over it,” she told The Independent. “We have been trying to sit down. And I sat in a meeting with my three counterparts, where we said very clearly the consensus was bipartisan continuing resolution, which took into consideration Democratic priorities and also dealt with the issue of not being able to steal funds that had already been appropriated.”
Democrats are also confident they have public opinion on their side, citing a poll from Morning Consult showing that 45 percent of voters saying they’d blame Republicans for a shutdown and only 32 percent saying they’d blame the Democrats.
Democrats also have to deal with the fact many federal workers in states such as Virginia and Maryland, which mostly vote Democratic, would be without a paycheck if the government is shut down.
“We all want to keep the federal government open, which is why I’m supporting the Democratic proposal that does that, but also puts up safeguards against the president’s lawless activities,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told The Independent.
And so we all want to keep the federal government open, but we don’t want to give Donald Trump a blank check to continue his lawless activities and leave the time bomb ticking on health care in America, because as you know, when that bomb goes off, millions of Americans will see their premiums spike.”
But so far, no Democrat wants to specifically say they are okay with a government shutdown, but they show no interest in getting to “yes” on the Republican proposal.
