House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday that Democrats would not be willing to compromise on their demands to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of this year.
Republicans are “not acting in good faith as it relates to dealing with a health care crisis that they’re visiting on the American people,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an exclusive interview.
Asked whether he believed the shutdown would end by Thanksgiving, Jeffries told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “I hope so.”
“[President] Donald Trump needs to get off the golf course and get back to the negotiating table. He spent more time golfing over the last several weeks than he has talking to Democrats who represent half the country as part of an effort to find a bipartisan path forward,” the House minority leader added.
Democrats and Republicans are still in a stalemate as the government shutdown is set to drag into its 41st day on Monday. Last week, the ongoing funding lapse set a record for the longest government shutdown in American history.
Jeffries’ remarks come after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday proposed a path out of the shutdown that would have extended ACA subsidies for one year and created a bipartisan committee to look into longer-term solutions for the rising cost of ACA insurance premiums.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune dismissed the proposal almost immediately.
During a rare Saturday Senate session, Thune said, “The Democrats’ proposal is just more of the same, masking rising premiums and padding insurance companies’ profits with more taxpayer dollars. The Democrat leader’s proposal is a nonstarter.”
The proposal was a step back from Democrats’ previous position, when they said that a one-year extension wasn’t satisfactory and called for a multiyear extension. Earlier in the shutdown, Democrats also called for a reversal of cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed earlier this year.
“I’m willing to compromise,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who helped craft the proposal, said Friday. “But our Republican colleagues have to be willing to compromise, too.”
The expiring ACA subsidies are at the center of the shutdown fight, with Democrats noting that insurance premiums for people who use ACA health insurance could double or triple in price next year if the subsidies expire at the end of December.
Open enrollment for ACA health care plans began earlier this month.
Jeffries dismissed the idea that Democrats would vote to reopen the government if Republicans’ promised to hold a vote on extending ACA subsidies when the government reopens.
“I don’t think that the House Democratic Caucus is prepared to support a promise, a wing and a prayer from folks who have been devastating the health care of the American people for years,” the minority leader said.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who appeared on the program after Jeffries, blasted Democrats over the shutdown, telling Welker, “This shutdown is not about health care. This shutdown was really about Democrats saying they want to show their resistance to President Trump. They want to show they’re fighting. They want to be able to energize their base.”
“The focus has really been on, ‘We want to show we’re fighting Trump,’ because their base says, ‘You’re not fighting hard enough,’” Lankford added.
Over the weekend, Trump continued to blame Democrats for the shutdown, but in a Saturday post on Truth Social, he appeared to offer a proposal for a new health care system that would “take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare.”
The proposal, the president wrote, was something he was “recommending to Senate Republicans.”
Lankford on Sunday called Trump’s post “pretty straightforward,” saying: “Stop sending money just to insurance companies and hope it gets better. Give Americans freedom of choice. If we’re going to allow subsidies to get out there, get them to people, not to insurance companies.”
Democrats including Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., blasted Trump’s posts, saying that he was proposing a plan to eliminate the health insurance system and give “people a few thousand dollars instead.”
Lankford dismissed Murphy’s interpretation of Trump’s proposal, telling “Meet the Press,” “That’s not what the proposal is. And I’m sure Sen. Murphy knows that it makes for good politics, but that’s not what it really is, and he knows it.”
The Oklahoma senator added, “This is not about wiping out all insurance.”
Later Sunday, Trump once again blasted Democrats over the shutdown, writing in a post on Truth Social, “Democrats claim to be working for ‘the little guy,’ and driving down your Health Insurance, but the OBAMACARE SCAM goes STRAIGHT TO THEIR BEST FRIENDS IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY. THEY ARE MAKING A “KILLING,” while Health Coverage only gets WORSE.”
“If Democrats get their way again, they’re in for another HUGE Payday at the expense of the American People. NO DEAL!,” he added.
Still, Lankford was hopeful that the government would reopen by Thanksgiving.
“I do. And it absolutely needs to,” he said when asked if he thought the government shutdown would be over by the holiday. “It needs to be open today, if we can get it open.”
“On the health care issue, it’s been fascinating,” Lankford added, reiterating Trump’s and Senate Republicans’ position since the start of the shutdown.
“President Trump came out within the first week and said, ‘If you want to talk about health care, we’ll talk about health care as soon as the government is open.’ Vice President [JD] Vance came forward, ‘We’ll talk about health care as soon as the government’s open.’ We’re not going to negotiate while the government is shut down, which is the exact same position we’ve been in,” the Oklahoma senator said.
