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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on Sunday that Democrats have taken “the federal government as a hostage” amid tension over a looming government shutdown.
“Thirteen different times, we did continuing resolutions in the Democratic majority. And in every case, they passed,” Thune told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”
“And what the Democrats have done here, is take the federal government as a hostage, and for that matter, by extension, the American people, to try and get a whole laundry list of things that they want, the special interest groups on the far-left are pushing them to accomplish,” he added.
Thune’s Democratic counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), said later on “Meet the Press” that the chance of the government shutdown “depends on the Republicans.”
President Trump is expected to meet with congressional leaders, including Schumer, Thune, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday.
“President Trump has once again agreed to a meeting in the Oval Office,” Schumer and Jeffries said in a prior joint statement. “As we have repeatedly said, Democrats will meet anywhere, at any time and with anyone to negotiate a bipartisan spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people.”
Government funding ends after Tuesday, resulting in a government shutdown beginning Wednesday unless congressional action is taken. Any measure requires bipartisan backing, as it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the upper chamber.
Johnson claimed Sunday that there is “nothing partisan” about his party’s bill to continue funding the government ahead of the shutdown deadline.
During an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the Louisiana Republican rebuffed Jeffries’s suggestion this week that the Republican proposal is a “reckless partisan bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people” and that “their bill is dead on arrival.”
