‘Unserious and Ridiculous’: Schumer, Jeffries Dig In on Spending Fight After Trump Cancels Meeting With Democrats

Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries are digging in on their demands for government funding, even though President Trump canceled a meeting with the two of them on Tuesday morning. Mr. Trump had said he would “love” to meet with the Democrats, though now he says their demands are “unserious.”On Friday, House Republicans passed their short-term spending extension known as a continuing resolution, which would keep the government open through November 21. The Senate voted on that bill on the same day, though it failed to get the necessary 60 votes to pass. All Democrats, except for Senator John Fetterman, voted to block the bill. Mr. Schumer then put up his counteroffer for a vote — a continuing resolution that made certain health insurance subsidies permanent and restricted the president’s power to unilaterally cut funding. Mr. Trump says he is not willing to entertain such proposals. “I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” Mr. Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post on Tuesday morning. He claimed that Mr. Schumer and the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are threatening to shut down the government over things like “$1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens” and having “dead people on … Medicaid.”The $1 trillion figure to which Mr. Trump refers is the nearly $1 trillion cut Republicans made to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year, which Democrats now want to reverse. The total funding cut for “Illegal Aliens” was a policy change made in the OBBA. It cuts funds to states that use state-only funds for healthcare for non-citizens. That provision is worth about $11 billion in federal funding.“There are consequences to losing Elections but, based on their letter to me, the Democrats haven’t figured that out yet,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Democrats in Congress seem to have totally lost their way. They obviously have no idea what it means to put America First.”In response, Mr. Schumer dug in. In a post on X, he said simply to the president, “When you’re finished ranting, we can sit down and discuss health care.” When Mr. Schumer was one of 10 Democrats to give Republicans the votes to advance and pass their spending bill in March, after which acrimony poured out, with his popularity among fellow Democrats plummeting. Mr. Jeffries, too, said that Democrats were not going to just roll over and keep the government open without concessions. “Leader Schumer and I are ready to meet with anyone at any time in any place to discuss the issues that matter to the American people and avoid a painful, Republican-caused government shutdown,” Mr. Jeffries said during a press conference at Brooklyn on Tuesday. “Democrats do not support the partisan Republican spending bill because it continues to gut the healthcare of the American people.”Speaker Mike Johnson backed up the president, writing that Mr. Schumer and Democrats were asking for a complete repeal of the Medicaid reforms passed by Republicans in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year. “This would be a MASSIVE $1.5 TRILLION spending HIKE tacked onto what is a simple 7-week funding bill.”In his Truth Social post, Mr. Trump did say he would meet with them if they were prepared to get “serious.”“I look forward to meeting with them if they get serious about the future of our Nation. We must keep the Government open, and legislate like true Patriots rather than hold American Citizens hostage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “To the Leaders of the Democrat Party, the ball is in your court,” he concluded.Senate Democrats have been trying to navigate this spending battle cautiously, though it was clear last week when the text of the funding agreement was released that not everyone was on the same page. Several Democratic senators who are usually very talkative refused to speak with reporters about what they thought of the bill and how they planned to move forward. One of the most important sticking points for both Democrats and the White House is Mr. Trump’s use of rescissions, a procedural mechanism the president can use to cut funding on a party-line basis. Once the government is funded in a bipartisan vote, the president can simply send a request to Congress that some money be cut, and that funding cut requires a simple majority in the Senate. In a warning sign earlier this month for where this fight was going, Senator Chris Coons — a moderate, well-liked Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee — said he would not vote to fund the government unless the rescissions issue was addressed. “We’re gonna try hard to keep the government open and to pass appropriations bills, but bluntly, President Trump and his allies in Congress have already been shutting down whole parts of the government,” Mr. Coons said in an interview with NPR. “If they continue in those efforts, I won’t support keeping the government open.”

‘Unserious and Ridiculous’: Schumer, Jeffries Dig In on Spending Fight After Trump Cancels Meeting With Democrats

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