Schumer, Jeffries hone funding message in shutdown-cliff countdown
Emerging from their closed-door meeting, party leaders took pains to show unity in their ranks after Senate Democrats caved in March to a government funding patch Republicans negotiated without any input from the minority party.
'House and Senate Democrats are in complete and total alignment,' House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters after the meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The two leaders privately huddled before bringing in a larger group of Democratic leaders.
Democrats are ready to join bipartisan funding negotiations with their Republican counterparts in good faith, the Democratic leaders said, as the Senate moves forward this week with debate on a funding bill with buy-in from both sides of the aisle. But they knocked House Republicans for forging ahead with partisan funding bills that would cut the budgets of most federal agencies.
'House Republicans are in fact marching us toward a possible government shutdown that will hurt the American people,' Jeffries said.
The leaders warned that funding negotiations could be complicated by Republicans' embrace of clawbacks packages like the $9 billion rescissions bill Congress cleared last week and President Donald Trump's moves to withhold funding Congress already approved.
While Democrats 'want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process,' Schumer said, 'the Republicans are making it extremely difficult to do that.'
Democratic leaders have privately discussed the need to focus on how government funding affects 'people,' rather than how Republicans are undermining the government funding 'process,' according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks.
'We are all united in making sure that we're doing the right thing for the people we represent,' Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate's top Democratic appropriator, said after the Tuesday meeting. 'They're worried about their housing, their health care, whether or not they can put food on the table. And our process here is to make sure that we are doing the right thing and funding the programs that they count on to be able to support their families.'
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House's top Democratic appropriator, said this is the worst appropriations process she has seen in her more than 34 years in Congress.
'It has not been what we have experienced,' DeLauro said. 'There's always been that give and take to pass the bills.'
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