Hakeem Jeffries Gets Spotlight in Shutdown Sit-Down with Trump

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will step into the brightest spotlight of his career Monday when he sits down with President Donald Trump in last-minute shutdown negotiations.

Jeffries, D-N.Y., has never met Trump face-to-face, and the bipartisan sit-down will be the first of its kind in the president’s second term.

“We are ready, we are willing, we are able to find a bipartisan path forward that actually keeps the government open but meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety, and their economic wellbeing,” Jeffries told reporters outside the House floor.

Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also D-N.Y., are making hefty demands as they threaten to vote down a seven-week continuing resolution (CR) which would prevent a government shutdown. 

The moment offers an opportunity for Democrats to prove their mettle to the party’s base.

In March, Schumer and nine other Democrat caucus senators provided the votes necessary for a continuing resolution to pass, spurring backlash in some quarters. Even Jeffries refused to comment on whether or not Senate Democrats needed new leadership after Schumer’s acquiescence back in March.

The current funding bill has already passed on mostly partisan lines in the House, but Republicans will again need at least seven Democrat caucus votes in the Senate in order to bring it to the floor and avert a partial government shutdown.

The government is set to run out of funding on September 30, when Senate Democrats will face a last-minute decision on whether or not to allow the bill to the floor.

These Democrat demands include: undoing recently passed cost-saving Medicaid reforms, hamstringing the White House’s ability to rescind certain federal funding, and extending expiring Obamacare health care premium tax credits, which were enhanced during the previous administration.

Last week, Trump cancelled a planned meeting with the Democrat leaders, calling their demands “unserious and ridiculous” in a social media post.

To Republicans, keeping the government open for a mere seven weeks in exchange for undoing much of the administration’s accomplishments does not sound like a great deal. Besides, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says that the entire point of the CR is to allow for bipartisan negotiations.

“Compromise on what?” replied Thune when questioned Saturday about whether Republicans have to make a deal with Democrats. “This is a simple seven- week funding resolution to allow us to do a normal appropriations process.”

He added:

This is new leadership. We’re trying to do appropriations bills in the old-fashioned way, in an open, transparent way, where the appropriations committee writes the bills with Democrat and Republican input, reports them out to the floor, where we have an open amendment process.

The Daily Signal pressed Jeffries on this issue, asking him why Democrats are opposing the CR and not allowing for an appropriations process which could allow for further negotiations.

Jeffries said he opposed Republicans’ proposed bills as well.

“In terms of the typical appropriations process, what House Republicans have done is to continue the Republican assault on health care,” Jeffries told The Daily Signal. 

“Republicans are trying to take vaccines away from children and families. That’s their appropriations bill. That’s their process that they’re trying to jam down the throats of the American people. The Democrats are not interested in participating in the continued Republican assault to cut health care—period, full stop. We’ve been very clear about this.”

Although the meeting will be a major debut for Jeffries as a head-to-head scrapper with Trump, his role has lower stakes than Schumer’s, since Republicans do not require any House Democrat votes.

The White House has already suggested they are not interested in caving in to Democrats’ demands off the bat.

“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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “Now is not the time to try to gain political points against Donald Trump. Now is the time to do right by the American people and keep the government funded.”

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