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President Donald Trump said Monday night he is not concerned that voters will blame him or Republicans if the federal government shuts down this week, accusing Democrats of pushing “deranged” demands tied to health care for immigrants in the country illegally.
“People that are smart know what’s going on,” Trump told Politico after meeting with congressional leaders at the White House in a last-minute effort to avert a shutdown. “They want to destroy health care in America by giving it to millions and millions of illegal aliens.”
The negotiations collapsed without progress, leaving Congress bracing for a shutdown when the fiscal year ends at midnight Tuesday. At the center of the stalemate are Democratic demands to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Republicans have argued for a “clean” continuing resolution to extend current spending levels temporarily, insisting that broader debates on health care, taxes and social programs should be settled separately. Democrats, meanwhile, say they will not agree to a stopgap measure without protections for Medicaid and other health benefits.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leaders echoed Trump’s criticism, saying Democrats were attempting to roll back provisions of a domestic policy law signed by Trump in July that tightened restrictions on federal benefits for noncitizens.
Currently, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
“I think we’re headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing,” Vice President JD Vance said earlier Monday. “You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage.”
Trump’s latest remarks were more restrained than some of his earlier attacks, but continued the theme that Democrats were willing to risk a shutdown over policies the administration calls unpopular.
As the deadline approached, the Trump administration released contingency plans outlining how federal services would be affected. The Department of Health and Human Services stated that approximately 41 percent of its workforce would be furloughed.
The administration has also threatened mass layoffs, signaling that it may use the shutdown as an opportunity to permanently reduce the size of the federal workforce.