Top Democrats emerged from a White House meeting believing that President Donald Trump may eventually cut a deal on their biggest demand — even if it first requires shutting down the government to get it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that Trump expressed openness to extending key enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, characterizing the president as keenly interested in averting sudden price hikes for roughly 20 million enrollees.
“We laid out to the president some of the consequences of what’s happening in health care,” the New York Democrat said following the Oval Office sit-down with Trump, adding later that “it seemed from his body language and some of the things he said that he was not aware of the ramifications.”
The health care discussion left Democrats feeling like there could be an opening amid what both Democratic and Republican leaders characterized as a meeting that brought them no closer to averting a shutdown early Wednesday, two Democratic sources familiar with the meeting said. One of those sources said Trump appeared open to both a short-term deal as well as something bigger on health care.
The White House soon clarified that any deal could only come after Democrats agree to keep the government running.
“The president wants a clean CR and he wants to keep the government open,” a White House official said of Trump’s posture in the meeting, referring to Republicans’ funding measure.
At one point, Trump suggested that Vice President JD Vance insert himself more directly into the Hill negotiations, the second source familiar with the meeting said. At another point, Schumer told reporters after, Trump acknowledged he could take some of the blame for a shutdown. CNN has asked the White House about those accounts.
And in the immediate aftermath of the meeting, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries portrayed Trump’s interest as vindication of a hardline strategy that has pushed Congress to the brink — and raised the risk that Democrats could face major political fallout for triggering an extended federal closure.
“We’re not going to support a partisan spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries told Democrats at a caucus meeting later Monday evening that he was surprised by how much listening Trump had done at the White House gathering, a source in the room told CNN. That’s in part why some Democrats are feeling like the president hadn’t been given the full picture on the Obamacare subsidies and health care, another source in the room told CNN. “Jeffries seemed encouraged,” that source added.
Still, the two sides remain very far apart on reaching any sort of deal.
While Trump appeared willing to negotiate with Democrats on the expiring subsidies, congressional Republican leaders were far more skeptical during the private meeting, the first source familiar with the meeting said. One Republican source familiar with the meeting disputed Schumer and Jeffries’ account, insisting that Trump was open only to a broader conversation on health care. While the meeting was animated, there was no shouting and Trump was “calm” and “cool,” that source said.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Democrats for having “chosen to pick a partisan fight and shut the government down as the clock is running out to score political points.”
The diverging takeaways from the meeting have only left both sides further dug in — and sharply raised the odds of a standoff that could shutter the government for days and force thousands of federal workers to go without pay.
The White House, in an effort to force Democrats to capitulate on their demands, has also threatened mass firings across the government aimed at permanently whittling down the federal workforce.
But Democrats leaders, urged on by a restless base eager to more aggressively confront Trump, have offered few signs they plan to back off demands for a series of concessions in exchange for the votes needed to advance a stopgap funding measure. They’re betting that a shutdown over health care can energize the party and win over voters already anxious over the rising cost of living.
While that all-or-nothing approach has raised worries even among rank-and-file Democrats about the political fallout if voters end up blaming them for shutdown, Schumer and Jeffries on Monday sought to project total commitment.
“It’s now in the president’s hands,” Schumer said. “(Trump) can avoid a shutdown if he gets the Republican leaders to go along with what we want. And if they don’t, the American people are going to know.”