JD Vance (00:00):
Well, good afternoon everybody. We just had a very frank conversation with the Senate and House Democratic leadership. Look, the principle at stake here is very simple. We have disagreements about tax policy, but you don't shut the government down. We have disagreements about healthcare policy, but you don't shut the government down. You don't use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops, to not have essential services of government actually function. You don't say the fact that you disagree about a particular tax provision is an excuse for shutting down to the people's government and all the essential services that come along with it. If you look at what Chuck Schumer has said in the past consistently, it's, "Whatever our disagreements are, let's negotiate with them. Let's talk about them. Let's figure out a bipartisan solution," but you don't shut the government down. In other words, you don't put a gun to the American people's head and say, "Unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we're going to shut down your government." That's exactly what they're proposing out there.
(00:52)
Now, we have to remember, they're very frustrated. They say that they're very frustrated about the fact that this negotiation has not taken place until today. But if you look at the original thing they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package basically saying to the American people, "We want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their healthcare while Americans are struggling to pay their healthcare bills." That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd, we told them it was absurd, and now they come in here saying that, "If you don't give us everything that we want, we're going to shut down the government." We think that's preposterous, we think it's totally unacceptable, and we think the American people are going to suffer because these guys won't do the right thing.
(01:35)
Now, I want to make one final point here. You will hear a lot from Senate Democrats, from House Democrats about the fact that American healthcare policy is broken. Well, we know that American healthcare policy is broken. We've been trying to fix it for the eight months that we've been in office, but every single thing that they accuse about being broken about American healthcare is policy the Democrats have supported for the past decade. So if they want to talk about how to fix American healthcare policy, let's do it. The speaker would love to do it. The Senate majority leader would love to do it. Let's work on it together, but let's do it in the context of an open government that's providing essential services to the American people. That's all that we're proposing to do, and the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position is. I think we're headed to do a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they changed their mind, but we're going to see, I'll let the speakers say a few words.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Thank you, Vice President Vance. I want to thank the President as well. They showed strong leadership today. They invited the four leaders over here because the President is operating in good faith, and he demonstrated that very well. The problem is that Chuck Schumer and Leader Jeffries refused to acknowledge the simple facts. Let's review what the simple facts are. As the vice president was saying, this is the common sense thing to do. This is the right thing to do. This is the simple thing to do. By way of review, the House is getting back to the way the regular appropriations process is supposed to work. 12 separate appropriations bills passed through the House Appropriations Committee, three off the floor, the Senate doing their work as well. All this in bipartisan fashion by the way. They passed three bills in the Senate. Those bills don't match up exactly.
(03:08)
So for the first time in years since 2019, you have a conference committee that is being constituted between the House and the Senate. This is the way a bill becomes a law. They work out the differences. All this is happening in bipartisan fashion. The problem is we've run out of clock. September 30th is the end of the fiscal year, so we need a little more time. So what we did in the Republican majority is the right responsible, simple thing, a clean continuing resolution, a short-term nonpartisan, continuing resolution. It's only 24 pages in length. Leader Thune has a copy if you want to see the exhibit. There's nothing partisan in here, no policy writers, none of our big party preferences because we want to do the right thing by the American people and allow more time for negotiation.
(03:51)
Now, there's a reason that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have come out here stomped the feet saying that they can't go along with this. They're trying to bring in extraneous issues. They issued a counterproposal. You should go take a look at what they requested, $1.5 trillion in new spending that is unrelated to the ongoing appropriations process. They wanted to, as you said, restore taxpayer-funded benefits, okay? Hard-working taxpayers in America, they want to take your funds and give that for benefits to illegal aliens. They want to restore that because we got rid of it. They want to prop up left-leaning media outlets, 500 million. They threw in on top of that one and a half trillion dollars on a seven-week stopgap funding measure. We're not going to do that. They know we can't do that, and we never have in the past. During the Biden administration, there were 13 threatened shutdowns, the Republicans and the minority did the right thing. We kept the government open. We're simply asking for the Democrats do the same.
(04:49)
Again, I want to thank President Trump for the strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments and they just wouldn't acknowledge the simple facts. I want to thank Vice President here for showing his leadership as well. If the Democrats make the decision to shut the government down, the consequences are on them, and I think it's absolutely tragic. We never said that was a good idea, we never believed it is, and I want you to remember when we voted in the House, we passed it out of the House. The House has done its job. We did that almost two weeks ago. Every Democrat in the House except one voted to shut the government down. That is the record, and don't forget it. I'll ask Leader Thune to step in here.
John Thune (05:26):
Well, thanks Mr. Vice President. This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is what we're talking about, 24 pages. It's a continuing resolution to fund the government through November the 21st. I don't know where they're saying this is some huge partisan thing. This is something we do fairly routinely, and when the Democrats had the majority on 13 different occasions, they had the majority, President Biden was in the White House, we passed continuing resolutions to fund the government. This is purely and simply hostage-taking on behalf of the Democrats. The Republicans are united, House Republicans, Senate Republicans, President Trump. The House has passed a clean funding resolution to fund the government until November the 21st. It's clean, it is bipartisan and it is short-term, but it gives us enough time to finish the appropriations process, which is the way we should be funding the government. So Republicans in the House and the Senate, the President united, they've passed the bill.
(06:24)
This is sitting right now at the Senate desk. We could pick it up and pass it tonight. We could pick it up and pass it tomorrow before the government shuts down, and then we don't have a government shutdown. It is totally up to the Democrats because right now they are the only thing standing between the American people and the government shutting down. We're all in favor of funding the government, and this is something that's been done routinely 13 different times by the Democrats when they had the majority. So to me it's purely a hostage-taking exercise on the part of the Democrats. We are willing to sit down and work with them on some of the issues they want to talk about, whether it's the extension of premium tax credits with reforms. We're happy to have that conversation. But as of right now, this is a hijacking of the American people and it's the American people are going to pay the price.
JD Vance (07:14):
Russ, do you want to say a few words?
Russell Vought (07:16):
Sure, sure. We want to keep this government open. It is not good for the American people to have the government shut down for any period of time. We will manage it appropriately, but it is something that can all be avoided. It can all be avoided by accepting a reasonable position, which is what the House has passed and what sits at the Senate desk, which is to continue to fund the government with a short-term continuing resolution. It has never been a viewpoint that one and a half trillion dollars is a reasonable amount of spending to be included on a short-term CR. This is hostage-taking. It is not something that we are going to accept, and we hope that the Democrats come back from the brink, fund this government and allow us to move forward. Thank you.
JD Vance (08:01):
Right, what's up?
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Mr. Vice President, so just to be clear, is there room for negotiation here with Democrats and you mentioned you believe that we are headed toward a government shutdown. Is the federal government preparing to fire federal workers if the government does indeed shutdown?
JD Vance (08:14):
Well, first of all, we have to keep essential services functioning as well as possible if the Democrats shut down the government and Russ has been tasked with making sure that's possible. Now asked about negotiations. One of the things I admired about the President, but frankly, the entire team's approach during the conversation we just had with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries was, yeah, they have some crazy ideas. Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for healthcare, that's a crazy idea. Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea. But they had some ideas that I actually thought were reasonable, and they had some ideas that the President thought was reasonable. What's not reasonable is to hold those ideas as leverage and to shut down the government unless we give you everything that you want.
(08:50)
There were multiple times where Leader Jeffries or Leader Schumer would say, "You know what? We should be doing this," and the President of the United States would say, "Yeah, absolutely. Let's have that conversation, but we're going to do it in the context of the people's government being open. We're not going to let you take the people's government hostage and then give you everything that you want." And that's really the state of the negotiation. Yeah, let's have a conversation. Let's have a negotiation, but we're not going to shut down the government because we won't give the Democrats everything that they want. Caitlin.
Speaker 6 (09:17):
Mr. Vice President, can you respond to what Senator Schumer said that there were aspects about healthcare and being certain people that the president was learning about for the first time in that meeting, and was the president open to a deal on the ACA subsidies?
JD Vance (09:28):
Well, I'm highly skeptical that the president was learning about it for the first time, thanks to Chuck Schumer. But what I will say is, look, we have put a 50 billion rural hospital fund into the actual Big Beautiful Bill that we passed a few months ago, because we know that under Biden Administration's policies, there are a lot of small-town hospitals, a lot of rural healthcare that was getting shut down and that was struggling. We're trying to fix that problem. In fact, we're happy to work with Democrats to fix that problem. We want to work across the aisle to make sure that people have access to good healthcare. We are not going to let Democrats shut down the government, take a hostage unless we give them everything that they want. That's not how the people's government has ever worked. That's certainly not how it's going to work under the Trump Administration. Go ahead, please.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
This is very important on healthcare. Their counterproposal, what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding is that they claw back the 50 billion that we put into the rural hospital support structure. They want to take that back. We're not going to do that. We passed that because we have to allow for that. Also, if they shut the government down, not only are troops unpaid, federal workers and all the services that everybody relies upon, but the WIC program, the nutrition program, women, infant and children, they will not get… that program will not be funded. FEMA won't be funded. We have hurricanes off the coast of the United States right now. This is serious business. You have telehealth, you have mental health services, all that that's funded by the government would stop if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats have their way. The Democrat shutdown would be damaging for the country. We can't allow for it. Thank you all.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
[inaudible 00:10:57] of passing a shorter CR? Was there any mention of passing a shorter CR?