Reality Check: Democrats Don’t Want to Negotiate, They Want to Dictate

Washington, D.C. – After spending the past month rehearsing lines and pointing fingers, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have unveiled their latest production: blaming Republicans for not answering their ransom note.

The irony? They’re the ones writing the shutdown script. House Republicans acted and passed a clean resolution to keep the government open. In contrast, Democrats are demanding extraneous provisions and more than $1 trillion in new spending for just four weeks of government funding. That’s not a negotiation – it’s extortion.
 
Reality Check

• Democrats had no issue voting for multiple short-term funding extensions under the last administration.
• The same Democrats who once warned that shutdowns would be “dangerous,” “disastrous,” and “self-inflicted harm” to seniors, veterans, servicemembers, families, and the economy – are now actively trying to cause one.
• A clean, short-term CR is exactly what House and Senate Democrats requested at the start of this process.
• Democrats rejected a nonpartisan, short-term continuing resolution that simply keeps government open responsibly and allows appropriators the opportunity to finish the FY26 process.

Questions Democrats Must Answer 

• How does voting for a government shutdown protect the operations of the federal government?
• How does opposing a clean, short-term continuing resolution that prevents harmful disruptions to our national security and vital programs support Americans?
• How does voting to furlough government workers help those employees or their families?
• How is this clean, short-term stopgap different from the many they voted for previously?
• How does forcing a shutdown help good-faith negotiations on the three FY26 conference bills already underway?
• How did holding up full-year negotiations with unrelated provisions work out for Democrats in FY25?

While Democrat leadership doubles down on creating an ordeal, we’ll remind them who've always led the art of the deal. This is no shutdown showdown – it’s a situation designed by Democrats. If House and Senate Democrats wanted to keep the government open and serving the American people, they would have voted for H.R. 5371.
 

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