Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) joined Jake Tapper on CNN where Tapper pressed Murphy on whether Democrats are set to step in to help Americans struggling with food instability and healthcare subsidies due to the Schumer shutdown.
Murphy couldn’t provide a yes or no answer and instead resorted to the Democrats’ preferred method of throwing back a word salad while attempting to accuse Republicans and President Trump of not agreeing to negotiate.
The ongoing partial government shutdown is now in its 27th day as Democrats refuse to negotiate.
Republicans have passed and repeatedly pushed a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government at current levels through November 21, allowing separate talks on expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and Medicaid cuts.
Democrats have blocked every effort in the Senate, demanding the subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31 and will affect the premiums of 20 million Americans, be extended before reopening the government.
There have been 11 documented attempts by Republicans to advance the funding bill in the Senate via procedural votes, all failing to reach the 60-vote threshold due to Democratic opposition.
Jake Tapper: Let’s turn to the government shutdown. Funding for food stamps is expected to run out at the end of this week.
This is happening because Democrats have not agreed to vote to fund the government without the Republicans making concessions to seriously change health care policy.
Is this a trade-off you’re willing to make and continue to make, letting some Americans go hungry until these Obamacare subsidies get extended?
Chris Murphy: Well, let’s be clear. We’re shut down right now because Republicans are refusing to even talk to Democrats about a bipartisan budget bill. As you know, the reason that we didn’t shut down for four years when Joe Biden was President was because Democrats negotiated with Republicans, and every single one of those short-term or long-term funding bills, included both Democratic and Republican priorities.
So the government is shut down because Republicans have done something unprecedented. They have refused to talk to Democrats about a bipartisan budget.
Yes, we have priorities just like they do. One of our priorities is pretty simple, making make sure that premiums don’t go up by 75% on 22 million families this fall. Now, the reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly.
The President just announced $20 billion going to bail out the Argentine economy. For $20 billion, we could open the government back up. That’s enough money to relieve a lot of pressure of these premium increases. We could get this deal done in a day.
If the President was in DC rather than being overseas, we could open up the government on on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.
Watch:
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