Jeffries demands House Republicans return to Washington to negotiate

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of thousands of federal workers went unpaid Friday during the 24th day of an agonizing government shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called on House Republicans to return to Washington to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.

“We need Republican support for a bipartisan path forward in order to get out of this situation,” Jeffries said Friday during a news conference at the Capitol.

“I said this directly to the president with (House Speaker Mike) Johnson and (Senate Majority Leader John) Thune right next to me,” Jeffries said, referencing a White House meeting in late September to avert the current shutdown. “This does not get resolved until you decide to give permission to Republicans on Capitol Hill to negotiate a bipartisan resolution.”

House Republicans have been in recess since Sept. 19 after passing a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through Nov. 21. That bill has repeatedly failed in the Senate as Democrats demand an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that will otherwise expire at the end of the year.

The federal government has been closed since Oct. 1, when Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to pass legislation that would fund it for the 2026 fiscal year. Hundreds of thousands of essential federal workers are now working without pay while others are furloughed.

On Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill called the Shutdown Fairness Act that would have allowed pay for air traffic controllers, military troops and other essential federal workers the Office of Personnel Management has approved while the government is shut down.

“Deranged Democrats just blocked our bill to pay essential workers who keep Americans safe. Why? They believe that forcing Americans to work without pay gives them leverage,” Senate Republicans wrote on X after the failed vote.

On Friday, Jeffries reiterated a point he has made multiple times since the shutdown began.

“We’re prepared to support any bipartisan legislation that comes out of the Senate that is designed to decisively address the Republican health care crisis, reopen the government and enact a bipartisan spending agreement that actually makes life better for the American people,” he said.

Jeffries cited Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report that inflation rose at an annual rate of 3% in September as evidence that Republican policies are not working. He said the upcoming health care open enrollment season will make it “even more significant for Congress and the president to deal with” the protracted shutdown as Americans begin to see increased costs for health insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles in 2026.

He refuted the idea that Democrats bear responsibility for any lasting fallout from the shuttered government and pushed back on the Republican contention that their stalled funding bill continues spending levels approved during the Biden administration.

He said the spending levels the Republicans would like to extend are based on the Republican stopgap funding bill Congress passed in March to keep the government running through the end of September. That bill cut $13 billion for domestic programs, including Medicaid.

“That March spending bill wasn’t Biden-level spending. It was Trump partisan-level spending,” Jeffries said Friday.

“We’ve made clear we will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people. We’ve been saying that for six weeks. We have not moved off our position.”

Neither have Republicans, who insist the govenrment must reopen before any negotiations can happen. 

“It’s becoming clearer by the day that Democrats don’t want an outcome, they want a political issue,” Thune wrote on X on Friday. “They’ve refused to reopen the government – 12 times. They’ve refused my offer to discuss Obamacare’s failures. They’ve refused my offer to hold a vote on their own proposal to address a problem they created. They’ve refused to pay the troops and federal employees who are working without a paycheck. The only thing they’ve said yes to? The Schumer Shutdown and political ‘leverage.’”