Government shutdown fears mount as Trump walks away from talks
Benjamin Weiss
WASHINGTON (CN) — As the government lurches closer to a fiscal cliff, President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had walked away from a meeting with congressional Democrats aimed at hammering out a budget compromise and averting a government shutdown.
The president has pulled back from bipartisan negotiations days before the Sept. 30 budget deadline, a move Democrats warn heightens the risk of a shutdown.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer planned to meet with Trump on Thursday to discuss a short-term budget bill that would keep government programs running. However, after passing through the House, the Republican-led stopgap stalled in the Senate.
But, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump announced that he had scrapped the scheduled sit-down.
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” he said.
Democrats oppose the Republican stopgap, also known as a continuing resolution, arguing that it was drafted without their input and that funding bills should be bipartisan. Schumer countered with a plan that included extending Affordable Care Act tax credits.
Trump complained that the Democrats’ proposal clashed with his administration’s priorities. “There are consequences to losing elections, but based on their letter to me, the Democrats haven’t figured that out yet,” he wrote.
Congressional Republicans passed their measure in the House last week on a majority vote, extending funding into mid-November. However, in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed, they’ll need Democratic support.
And, with budget negotiations breaking down, Democrats are setting the stage to blame Republicans for an increasingly feasible government shutdown.
In a post on X Tuesday morning, Jeffries accused the GOP and Trump of being “extremists” who would shut down the government, “because they are unwilling to address the Republican health care crisis that is devastating America.”
“Donald Trump has never used my name during his presidency,” the House leader said in a separate post. “Now he is afraid to meet to discuss the Republican health care crisis and pending government shutdown. Why is that?”
Schumer offered a terse reaction to Trump’s scrapping of Thursday’s meeting. “When you’re finished ranting, we can sit down and discuss health care,” he told the president.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, sought to reframe a possible government shutdown as a Democratic creation.
“Democrats are threatening to SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT unless their demands are met,” he wrote on X. “[T]his would be a MASSIVE $1.5 TRILLION spending HIKE tacked onto what is a simple 7-week funding bill. Unless they stop holding government funding hostage, this will clearly be the DEMOCRAT SHUTDOWN.”
The government has been funded by the continuing resolution since March, when Republicans narrowly passed a similar measure extending the stopgap into the fall. That patch was meant to buy time for full-year budget bills and advance Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
But while Congress managed to pass the White House’s flagship legislation over the summer, budget negotiations have long stalled.
Schumer in March acquiesced to Senate Republicans, agreeing to support the spring continuing resolution in a bid to keep the government open. But he has signaled that he may be willing to force a government shutdown this time around, suggesting that Republicans are in a weaker political position than they were earlier this year.