A top White House official said President Donald Trump will push congressional Democrats to back a House-passed stopgap bill during an Oval Office sitdown Monday — less than 48 hours before a possible government shutdown.
The strategy leaves a gulf between what Republicans are demanding and Democrats’ hope that Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson will launch negotiations on soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies.
“Let me be very clear about the president and the White House’s position: All we are asking for is a common-sense, clean funding resolution, a continuing resolution to keep the government open,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Monday interview on Fox News.
“The president is giving Democrat leadership one last chance to be reasonable, to come to the White House today to try to talk about this,” she added.
The sit down on Monday is the first high-level meeting to come out of a weekslong stalemate over government funding. A shutdown will begin at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if Congress does not act.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday that Democrats were going into the meeting with Trump “to have a good-faith negotiation about landing the plane in a way that avoids a government shutdown but does not continue the Republican assault on the health care of the American people.”
But Jeffries reiterated Monday that promises of future negotiations on the expiring insurance subsidies aren’t enough for him.
Senate Democrats haven’t lined up uniformly behind Jeffries. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demurred over the weekend when asked about the possibility of a funding deal that did not extend the ACA credits, instead pointing to the need for “real negotiations.”
Other key Senate Democrats to watch have declined to say how they will handle the GOP stopgap this week as they wait to see how the sit down at the White House goes.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
