Congressional Leaders Dig Into Their Positions Ahead of High-Stakes White House Meeting With Trump

Congressional leaders are digging into their positions ahead of a high-stakes meeting with President Trump at the White House on Monday, where they will try to cut a deal to keep the government open. If they fail to reach an agreement, the government will shut down at the end of the day on Tuesday. Republicans have for weeks been telling Democrats that they will not discuss policy issues like extended health insurance subsidies, as the shutdown deadline fast approached. On September 19, all Senate Democrats except for one voted to block a continuing resolution to keep the government open through November 21. It takes 60 votes to advance any spending bills to a final vote. Several top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate made appearances on the Sunday shows to lay out their demands for the meeting with Mr. Trump, and it appears no one is ready to budge. The majority leader, Senator John Thune, told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that whether or not the government shuts down is “totally up to the Democrats.”“The ball is in their court. There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now — we could pick it up today and pass it — that has been passed by the House, that will be signed into law by the president to keep the government open,” Mr. Thune said. When asked by the show’s host, Kristen Welker, if he was prepared to compromise with Democrats, Mr. Thune laughed.“Compomise on what, Kristen?” he said with a smile. “This is a simple, seven-week funding resolution to allow us to do a normal appropriations process — something that Democrat senators have said that they want to see done.”The minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, received intense backlash from the Democratic Party base in March when he and nine other Senate Democrats voted to advance a government funding deal. At the time, Mr. Schumer warned that a shutdown would give Mr. Trump the upper hand as he was trying to fire vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy and shutter agencies as part of his DOGE initiative. Mr. Thune says that Mr. Schumer is now acting out of fear of his own activist base, which is pushing him to notch some wins in the course of this normal appropriations process. “This is a simple, straightforward deal,” Mr. Thune said Sunday. “They’re trying to hijack it and load up all this liberal special interest stuff that they are working with these outside groups to do. It’s politics. It is political posturing.”“They are afraid of their base, and they’re trying to do something to get them motivated and not angry at them,” he added. Mr. Schumer, on the same program, said that Democrats need the Republican majority to revisit the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies now rather than before they expire on December 31 because the open enrollment period begins in November. Under the current continuing resolution proposal backed by Republicans, the next round of funding negotiations would not be completed until mid-November, which means health insurance costs could go up if the subsidies are not dealt with now. “We need a serious negotiation,” the New York senator said. “If they’re serious, I’m hopeful we can get something real done.”“The bottom line is very simple … It’s up to them,” he added, pushing blame back onto the majority. “The fundamental question hasn’t been answered yet — we’ll see on Monday. Are they serious about negotiating with us in a real way?”“They’re trying to intimidate the American people and us,” said Mr. Schumer, adding that he is prepared for a political fight. “The American will know it’s on their back.”If Senate Democrats do win some concessions from the GOP majority, then Speaker Mike Johnson will likely have to call the House back into session for an emergency vote on a new spending proposal. Currently, the House is not due to return to Washington until October 1, which is the day the shutdown will begin if no deal is reached. Mr. Johnson would likely run into his own problems in the lower chamber, however, given opposition on his right flank to the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Mr. Johnson said the point of the meeting at the White House on Monday is not to give Democrats any policy concessions. Rather, he wants Mr. Trump to convince the opposition party to get on board with the clean spending bill. “He wants to operate in good faith,” the speaker said of Mr. Trump. “He wants to talk to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and just try to convince them to follow common sense and do what’s right by the American people.”Even some of the more bipartisan Republican senators, including an Appropriations Committee member, Senator James Lankford, told the Sun earlier this month that Republicans should not go along with a Covid-era increase in health insurance spending. “This was a [reform] that was done for Covid. We’re not in a Covid emergency anymore,” Mr. Lankford told the New York Sun, describing Democrats’ demands for funding extensions not “reasonable.”

Congressional Leaders Dig Into Their Positions Ahead of High-Stakes White House Meeting With Trump

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