House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the bipartisan talks aimed at preventing a government shutdown have ended — at least temporarily — and accused GOP leaders in the lower chamber of abandoning the discussions.
“House Republicans have made a decision to walk away from the four-corners discussions that involved House Democrats, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans related to funding the government in a manner that meets the needs of the American people,” Jeffries said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
The assertion was a sharp contradiction from the comments coming from the top appropriators in both parties just hours before. On Wednesday afternoon, both Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the senior Democrat on the panel, said they were still at the table in search of a bipartisan deal to prevent a shutdown after March 14, when funding expires.
Asked what had changed, Jeffries said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had directed the GOP negotiators to quit the talks.
“At this moment, there is no discussion because the Speaker of the House has apparently ordered House Republican appropriators to walk away from the negotiating table,” Jeffries said.
”They are marching America towards a reckless Republican shutdown.”
Jeffries said the stalemate is the result of Republican infighting both within the House GOP and between the chambers. He also suggested Republican leaders are under pressure to heed the wishes of President Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency who is taking steps to gut large parts of federal agencies.
“They are in disarray over there,” Jeffries said. “House Republicans aren’t clear: Should they take orders from Donald Trump or Elon Musk or both?”
Johnson on Thursday rejected those claims, blaming Democrats for the stalemate while vowing that Republicans would not allow the government to shut down. But he also confirmed that the impasse is related to the cost-cutting efforts of Musk and his government efficiency team.
“What they’re cutting is fraud, waste and abuse. And I think every American should applaud that and every member of Congress should see it as their duty and responsibility to ensure that that is taking place,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol. “When we eliminate these — these atrocities is what I call it, it’s outrageous — we eliminate the outrageous fraud, waste of abuse, we do better, and we can then better allocate resources.”
Johnson emphasized that funding the government is the “duty and responsibility of Congress.”
“And it is becoming apparent that they are not interested in keeping the government funded,” he added. “So we will get the job done. We’re not gonna shut the government down. We’ll figure out a path through this. But I, I hope and believe that they will distinguish the effort to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.”
The finger pointing comes as Johnson and his leadership team are racing to unite their divided GOP conference behind not only a government spending strategy, but also a larger legislative package featuring some of President Trump’s top priorities, including tougher immigration laws and an extension of the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts.
Amid both debates, conservatives are urging steeper spending cuts to federal programs — an effort that’s facing stiff resistance from Democrats, whose support is needed to fund the government, and even moderate Republicans, whose backing is needed to move the larger reconciliation package.
Jeffries said Johnson’s strategy to blame Democrats for the impasse over spending is merely designed to disguise the divisions within the GOP.
“They are flailing over on the House Republican conference side, and then trying to project otherwise,” he said. “Yesterday, House Republicans walked away from the negotiating table. You’ve now shown America it’s all on you.”
