Government shutdown nears, congressional leaders to meet at White House

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions. If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy. Trump, ahead of the meeting, made it clear he had no intention to negotiate on Democrats’ current terms. “They’re going to have to do some things because their ideas are not very good ones,” the president said Monday. Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats have held firm. They’re using one of their few points of leverage to demand Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits. “We finally got our meeting. We hope they’re serious about getting something real done on health care,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said as he departed the Capitol for the White House. Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week. “If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.” The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in a funding lapse. “Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Still, Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown. Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have subsidized health insurance for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year. At a Monday news conference, Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called health care cuts a “five-alarm fire” that is rippling across communities nationwide. “We’re not going to simply go along to get along with a Republican bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans who are already living with this Trump economy, where costs aren’t going down but they’re going up,” he said. The pandemic-era ACA subsidies are set to expire in a matter of months if Congress fails to act. Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits but want changes. Thune said Sunday that the program is “desperately in need of reform” and Republicans want to address “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later. It remains to be seen whether the White House meeting will help or hurt the chances for a resolution. Negotiations between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders have rarely gone well, and Trump has had little contact with the opposing party during his second term. The most recent negotiation in August between Schumer and the president to speed the pace of Senate confirmation votes for administration officials ended with Trump telling Schumer to “go to hell” in a social media post.