Congress seems to be careening toward a government shutdown, as Democratic and Republican leaders remain at an impasse over funding negotiations and expiring health care subsidies. Lawmakers have less than 24 hours to reach a deal before a midnight deadline.
Senate Democrats have refused to back the spending bill in an effort to force Republicans to negotiate on federal health care subsidies. They are pushing for an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year in exchange for their support. Democrats also want to repeal cuts to health care programs that were enacted by the GOP's tax and spending bill passed earlier this summer.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., met with President Trump at the White House Monday in hopes of reaching an agreement.
But the two parties walked away saying major differences remained. Democrats vowed to continue to push for concessions on health care.
Trump went on to taunt Democrats after the meeting. He posted a racist AI generated video on social media. It included mariachi music in the background and an image of Jeffries with a sombrero and a drawn-on mustache. This was accompanied by a vulgar, crudely deep-faked voiceover of Schumer denigrating Democrats.
Jeffries dismissed the video in a social media response, saying "Bigotry will get you nowhere."
Earlier in the day, Thune accused Democrats of "hijacking" the process with a push to address an issue he argued should be dealt with on a separate track. He pointed out that Democrats have voted repeatedly for stopgap bills in the past.
The standoff over spending could have major consequences for federal workers and people who rely on government services, particularly as the White House threatens to permanently fire some federal workers deemed non-essential in a shutdown. The move is a dramatic escalation in the increasingly frequent battle over federal spending.
House Republicans narrowly passed a continuing resolution earlier this month that would fund the government through Nov. 21, but that measure did not win the Democratic support needed to reach a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
The Senate is expected to bring up the House passed bill and the Democrats' alternative bill for votes again Tuesday afternoon, just hours before funding is set to run out. Both again are not expected to get the 60 votes needed to advance.
No resolution following a meeting at the White House
Congressional leaders met with President Trump and Vice President Vance on Monday afternoon, but left without a deal. After the meeting, Vance accused Democrats of holding government funding hostage.
"I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing," Vance said. "I hope they change their mind, but we're going to see."
Schumer, however, said it's on Republicans to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.
"Their bill has not one iota of Democratic input. That is never how we've done this before," said Schumer. "When I was leader, we negotiated four times with Republicans, and we never had a shutdown. And so it's up to the Republicans whether they want a shutdown or not."
Lawmakers from both party's positions appeared to harden on Monday evening, and most signaled no viable path to averting a shutdown. House Democrats gathered at the Capitol, but Speaker Johnson has not called the chamber back into session for votes, and it's likely to stay out of session as a shutdown starts.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., told reporters there was still time for some sort of solution, but GOP lawmakers were ignoring a major problem if they insisted on no provisions to deal with increasing costs.
"They must not be talking to the people I'm talking to in Georgia who are hurting and who cannot afford this astronomical hike that we are going to see in their health care premiums. People can't afford that."
Schumer's latest strategy comes almost six months after he and several other Senate Democrats voted to advance a GOP stopgap plan that avoided a government shutdown and pushed back the deadline to September. The move infuriated many within the Democratic base and fueled calls for the party to fight harder against Trump's agenda.
Republicans argue the stopgap bill allows the committees negotiating the spending bills more time to finish bipartisan spending bills.
"I think it will send a real sense of confidence across the country that we're actually capable of doing the very basics of our job up here," Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told reporters in the capitol on Monday. Rounds says he and other Republicans are open to addressing health care costs. "Even though none of us were supportive of the ACA to begin with, we can't walk away from the people who have had no place else to go to get their health care coverage."
What's affected in a shutdown?
While critical services such as Social Security and payments from Medicare and Medicaid, would continue, there could be delays in processing new applications for those programs.
In a shutdown, anything deemed nonessential is put on hold, so Americans could experience delays in certain services and hundreds of thousands of federal workers will go without pay.
In a move to seemingly raise the stakes, the White House's budget arm issued a memo that instructed federal agencies to prepare to lay off workers permanently, instead of the traditional temporary furlough.
Congressional Democrats panned the memo as an intimidation tactic.
"This is nothing less than mafia-style blackmail," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told NPR. "Essentially, the president is threatening to fire dedicated federal employees who have nothing to do with the ongoing political and policy dispute."
If the administration makes good on its threat, it could mean that whenever the federal government does reopen, it would have a smaller workforce.
Typically, the White House budget office would collect and release agency shutdown plans. This time, each individual agency is responsible for posting and sharing their plans, which has caused a confusing patchwork of information for those seeking to understand the scope of a potential shutdown. However, the White House is saying the Women and Infant Children program, known as WIC, will be among the programs hit quickest in a shutdown. The program provides nutrition assistance and healthcare screenings to mothers and young children.
NPR's Tamara Keith and Elena Moore contributed to this report.
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