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President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet on Thursday with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss government funding, as the September 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown approaches.
Schumer and Jeffries, both New York Democrats, requested the meeting over the weekend. In a letter to the president, they said Republican leaders in Congress had “repeatedly and publicly refused to engage in bipartisan negotiations to keep the government open at the direction of the president.”
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate and a 219-213 majority in the House.
The Senate on Friday rejected a short-term measure to keep the government funded, falling short of the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. Lawmakers then left Washington for a weeklong recess, raising the chances of a lapse in funding.
Trump warned on Friday that the country could experience a brief shutdown as the left refuses to work toward an agreement by the end of the month.
“We’ll continue to talk to the Democrats, but I think you could very well end up with a closed country for a period of time,” Trump said, according to The Hill. “And we’ll take care of the military. We’ll take care of Social Security. We’ll take care of the things we have to take care of.
“A lot of the things Democrats fight for … will not be able to be paid,” Trump added. “So we’ll watch and see how we do with that.”
The president thanked Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who pushed back on his party’s effort for a shutdown.
“I don’t know if you can make a deal with these people,” Trump said. “I think these people are crazy.”
Congress has repeatedly struggled in recent years to pass spending bills on time, with partisan standoffs threatening federal shutdowns that disrupt services and delay pay for government employees.
Annual appropriations cover only about one-quarter of the government’s $7 trillion budget. The remainder consists of mandatory spending, including Social Security and Medicare, as well as payments on the nation’s $37.5 trillion debt.