On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Arena,” House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) blamed Republicans for the government shutdown and said they’re “asking Democrats to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people” and “we’ll sit down with Republicans, any time, any place, at the White House or in the Congress, in order to reopen the government and find a bipartisan path forward to a spending agreement” so that Democrats will stop using the “Jim Crow relic” of the filibuster.
Host Boris Sanchez asked, “[T]he counterargument from the administration, Leader Jeffries, is that it is Democrats who, by not voting for a CR almost identical to the one that they voted for just months ago, are holding these SNAP recipients and the beneficiaries of other government programs hostage. And I am curious about where you see all of this ending, because, eventually, that emergency funding will run out again. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 billion, not enough to cover the 9 billion that I understand is required for SNAP benefits in November. Eventually, there will be more agencies and programs that will run out of money. So what is the plan?”
Jeffries answered, “Well, Donald Trump is the president. Republicans control the House and the Senate, and they’ve taken a my way or the highway approach from the very beginning of this year, unleashing their right-wing and extreme agenda and jamming it down the throats of the American people. But all of a sudden, they’re powerless. No one is buying that in America. As Democrats, what we’ve said is that we’ll sit down with Republicans, any time, any place, at the White House or in the Congress, in order to reopen the government and find a bipartisan path forward to a spending agreement that actually makes life better for the American people in an environment where the cost of living is way too high. And, as part of dealing with that situation, we have to, decisively, address the Republican healthcare crisis, particularly as it relates to the pending expiration of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
Later, he stated, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made this point a few weeks ago that Republicans are actually making a choice to keep the government shut down when everybody in Washington understands they have to reopen it. But they’re asking Democrats to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people, in an environment where they’ve already enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health centers are closing because of Republican policies all throughout the country, and now they’re refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. And they want us, as Democrats, to go along with it. In terms of what Republicans in the Senate may decide relative to the filibuster rule, it is a Jim Crow relic, but, ultimately, it’s their decision.”
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