After President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk blew up a bipartisan spending deal and left Speaker Mike Johnson to pick up the pieces just hours before a shutdown, Democrats insisted Thursday morning that they’re not coming back to the negotiating table.
At least, that’s the message publicly.
During a closed-door meeting with House Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told his caucus that, for the time being, the message is simple: Democrats aren’t accepting anything less than the 1,547-page spending plan that Republican leaders already offered. And if there are consequences — like a government shutdown over Christmas — Jeffries signaled that Democrats should convey that it’s entirely on Republicans.
And coming out of the meeting Thursday, Democrats were happy to deliver quotes on how this sudden crisis was entirely the GOP’s making and how the path forward is to put the already agreed-upon bill on the floor.
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The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, noted that Democrats aren’t in the majority. “We don’t have the pen. We don’t post the legislation. They posted it, they agreed to it,” she said. “Let’s move forward.”
The top Democrat on the Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern, had a remarkably similar thought, noting that Johnson “helped negotiate this deal and signed off on it.”
Jeffries told reporters after the meeting that “this reckless, Republican-driven shutdown” could all be avoided if House Republicans would just “stick with the bipartisan agreement that they themselves negotiated.”
But when asked if his position was truly the original bill or nothing, Jeffries was less definitive. “The best path forward is the bipartisan agreement we negotiated,” he said, content to leave it at that.
Democrats would, of course, prefer Johnson to put the current continuing resolution on the floor and rely on their caucus to primarily supply the votes — Johnson’s future as speaker be damned. But that option was feeling less likely by the minute Thursday, after rank-and-file Republicans revolted Wednesday and Trump issued new demands like extending or eliminating the debt ceiling on this bill.
While Democrats were repeating the company line that Johnson needs to bring the original bill to the floor, there were already some indications that Democrats would accept less than the current legislation to avoid a protracted government shutdown.
Rep. Ami Bera told NOTUS he suspects the drama ends with a “clean” CR that has disaster aid, farm bill provisions and “maybe a couple of other things.”
If that’s the case, he confessed, “That’s not a bad deal.”
Of course, most Democrats weren’t as forthcoming.
“Democrats need to stay here to vote and shut the fuck up,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove told NOTUS. “Stop revealing the game plan.”
She then corrected herself and said she had actually “revealed the game plan.”
“The game plan is to shut the fuck up,” she said. “Let the leader do his job and don’t get on a plane until after you’ve voted.”
But the real game plan seemed to be Democrats continuing to insist on the original bill while knowing they will probably end up with something narrower.
While a “skinny” CR — as some members are already referring to it — seems like the least dramatic and most plausible option floating around Capitol Hill, Democrats know there are plenty of other scenarios in which legislation goes sideways and becomes unpalatable for them.
For one, Trump’s insistence on a debt-limit extension seems to complicate negotiations more than it clarifies them. While some Democrats are supportive of doing away with the debt limit, many are now saying they only want to address the debt ceiling if the legislation abolishes it entirely. That’s an unlikely development given some of the concerns among Republicans.
For another, there are real concerns about the timeline of a “clean” CR. Not addressing many of the priorities in the current legislation for three months is unacceptable for some lawmakers, so a shorter timeline may be the solution. Then again, some lawmakers — particularly from the states most affected by natural disasters in the fall — are steadfast that disaster aid be a part of any stopgap spending bill. And an extension of the expiring farm bill is probably part of any deal.
There are all sorts of trip wires in the negotiations. But, for the time being, Democrats aren’t negotiating at all. They are simply waiting on Republicans to figure out what they can put forward that won’t cause an uprising in their own conference — and to figure out who is actually negotiating.
As former CEO turned Congressman Sean Casten told NOTUS, in corporate America, “We would have reached the point where I looked across the table and I said, ‘Why don’t you leave and send somebody back who has the authority to make decisions?’”
“Because, clearly, it ain’t you,” he said.
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Casey Murray and Violet Jira are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.
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