Johnson Responds to Hakeem Jeffries’ Debate Challenge

House Speaker Mike Johnson declined Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ request for a floor debate on the government shutdown while the Republican leader keeps the chamber in recess.

“When the polls say that about 13% of the people approve of your messaging, then you make desperate pleas for attention — and that’s what Hakeem Jeffries has done,” Johnson said at a press conference Monday.

The Democratic leader sent a letter to the speaker’s office Monday morning asking for a face-to-face debate on the House floor, which he said would allow both parties to air their arguments for why they will not budge on their demands to end the now seven-day-long shutdown.

“Given the urgency of the moment and the Republican refusal to negotiate a bipartisan agreement, a debate on the House Floor will provide the American people with the transparency they deserve,” Jeffries wrote. “It will also give you an opportunity to explain your ‘My way or the highway’ approach to shutting the government down, when Democratic votes are needed to resolve the impasse that exists.”

Johnson, who sent the House home after passing a continuing resolution to fund the government through November, has cancelled committee meetings this week and has moved to keep his conference out of the Capitol until the Senate passes the House-backed bill.

Other Republicans have endorsed Johnson’s strategy.

“Coming back now, you’re just negotiating against yourself,” Rep. Tom Cole, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS last week. “What would we be doing?”

At a Monday news conference, Johnson called Jeffries’ debate offer “nonsense,” saying the time to debate was last month when the House formally debated the seven-week continuing resolution. It ultimately passed the House 217-212 along a largely party-line vote.

Congress is entering its second week of a federal government shutdown after the Senate last week could not agree on a funding measure, which requires 60 votes to pass. The House-passed CR failed along party lines in the upper chamber four times and is expected to be voted on again Monday evening.

In exchange for their votes, Democrats are demanding an extension for expiring Affordable Care Act tax subsidies and rescission limits, both of which Republicans say they are not willing to consider.

“House Republicans continue to be on vacation, spread out across the country and the world, and this makes no sense,” Jeffries said at a news conference late last week. “It’s Exhibit A of the fact that House Republicans wanted to shut the government down and have no interest in reopening it because they don’t want to provide health care to everyday Americans.”