US Vice President JD Vance has warned that the government is heading towards shutdown after the Congress meeting.
According to New York Post, the US government stepped a little further to a partial shutdown after a failed meeting between the Democrats and US President Donald Trump in the White House on Monday, September 29.
After Congress failed to reach a funding agreement, Vance, standing with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, told reporters, “I think we are headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”
Both of the sides have blamed each other for causing a potential shutdown and failed meeting ahead of the Tuesday midnight deadline.
Before the vice president’s warning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told the media that there are “very large differences” over cuts to various health care programs. While Jeffries called it a “frank and direct discussion … but significant differences remain.”
Democrats are demanding that health benefits must also include the government funding extension, while Republicans insist on separate bills.
A source briefed on the Oval Office meeting told The Post, “Trump was seemingly annoyed that Schumer and Jeffries had leverage, even though Schumer and Jeffries don’t see their issue (healthcare and hospital funds) as leverage.”
“Trump was visibly bothered by the fact that the two men he has made an effort to ignore were now impossible to ignore because they could shut down ‘his’ government. A shutdown makes Trump’s power seem checked, and that’s a disaster in optics for a White House that has worked quite hard to architect unprecedented power,” he added.
It is worth noting that if Congress does not reach an agreement, all of the nonessential government operations will shut down at 11:59 pm on Tuesday, the first shutdown since the longest impasse of 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019.
