Top House leaders signaled on Sunday there’s virtually no appetite for their parties to cross the aisle and engage with the other side’s demands to pass a bill to reopen the government for a few more weeks, as the shutdown continues.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats view a stopgap bill to fund the government through November 21 as a “partisan Republican spending bill.”
Though the bill would extend current Biden-era spending levels, Jeffries said the legislation was “unacceptable” to Democrats because it also includes “massive cuts” codified by President Donald Trump’s domestic policy package.
Democrats are demanding a rollback in Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, as well as an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, an issue that Republicans have said they’re only willing to engage once the government reopens.
“They’re trying their best to distract the American people from the simple fact that they’ve chosen a partisan fight so that they can prove to their Marxist rising base in the Democrat Party that they’re willing to fight Trump and Republicans,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a subsequent interview on Fox News.
While Jeffries argued that his caucus wants to have a “broader” bipartisan conversation about fixing America’s “broken healthcare system,” Johnson fired back that Democrats are “eating up the clock in the month of October” to conduct such talks as the shutdown drags on.
Johnson also said he spoke on the phone recently with GOP Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been vocal about her concerns that Republicans could shoulder the blame for their constituents’ skyrocketing health insurance premiums.
He said he told the Georgia congresswoman that Republicans have been working “around the clock” on addressing the issue and offered to include her in those conversations with the relevant committees.
