Rep. Hakeem Jeffries Friday accused divided Republicans of dropping the ball on negotiations with Democrats on a spending plan to avoid a looming government shutdown.
The Democratic House Minority Leader said his GOP counterparts were too busy squabbling amongst themselves to put a proposal to the table that will keep the government funded past a March 14 deadline.
“We’ve been waiting day after day, week after week, month after month for the Republican budget proposal,” Jeffries said at a Capitol Hill press conference. Where is it? What’s the problem?”
Jeffries mocked Republicans for pleading for Democratic help to pass a spending plan, even though they regularly claim to have won a sweeping mandate in the November election.
“We’ve been lectured for months by Republicans about their big mandate,” he said. “So I’m confused about the leverage that we allegedly have in the face of such an overwhelming mandate that was given to Republicans by the American people.”
The Brooklyn Democrat accused Republicans of being locked in a “GOP civil war” between budget deficit hawks and those who want to slash taxes for the wealthy at any cost.
“They have been kind of busy fighting amongst themselves around how big the tax cuts will be for their billionaire buddies and how much they are going to cut out of Medicaid. I get it. Republicans have been busy.”
Jeffries spoke out minutes after House Speaker Mike Johnson sought to blame Democrats for what he called “an impasse” in budget talks. He told reporters to “ask Jeffries” why the negotiations were stalled.
Republicans hold a narrow three-seat majority in the House, but a handful of conservative Republicans regularly refuse to vote for what they call wasteful spending plans.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks with reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In the last Congress, that dynamic forced Johnson to regularly negotiate deals with Democrats to pass spending plans and keep the government open.
But that bipartisan cooperation came before President Trump started unilaterally slashing federal programs and even vowing to eliminate entire agencies that Congress funded.
Democrats are now less likely to help Johnson solve his own political headaches, especially when Republicans are eyeing one or more sweeping so called budget reconciliation bills to pass Trump’s controversial agenda through the Senate without the 60 votes normally needed to pass legislation.