Democrats are signaling turbulence ahead as Rep. Jasmine Crockett warned that Washington is barreling toward another shutdown just days before a critical funding deadline.
Crockett, a Texas Democrat now running for the U.S. Senate, said Tuesday she believes the federal government will shut down in January because Congress will fail to pass the appropriations bills needed to keep agencies operating.
“I see the government shutting down,” Crockett said during her Facebook livestream, titled “Crockett’s Quarterly Update,” as she looked ahead to the upcoming funding deadline.
Crockett framed her forecast as inevitable rather than political, even as she directed pointed criticism toward Republicans, arguing that lawmakers tasked with governing have failed to carry out their responsibilities.
“There is just one group of people that [couldn’t] care less about doing what they’re supposed to do, which is to govern,” she said during the stream, singling out GOP lawmakers.
Her remarks came months after Congress reopened the government following a shutdown that began Oct. 1 and stretched on for 43 days, becoming the longest lapse in funding in U.S. history.
When operations resumed, lawmakers were left with 12 unfinished appropriations bills required to fund the government for the fiscal year.
Since that reopening, Congress has failed to pass a single appropriations measure.
Instead, lawmakers relied on a continuing resolution, a temporary spending package that extended funding only through Jan. 30. Crockett said that lack of progress signals another breakdown ahead.
“We went out basically [on] Oct. 1 and after we went out, we couldn’t get anything done,” she commented. “It’s now technically two months later, still nothing’s been done.”
“So I don’t see how we are going to get to the point that we end up in a space in which the government does not shut down.”
President Donald Trump, however, has argued that Democrats are laying the groundwork for a shutdown of their own.
Speaking to supporters at a rally in North Carolina last week, the president pointed the finger squarely at the opposition party.
“The problem is that Democrats will shut down the government because they are beholden … to the insurance companies,” Trump remarked.
“So I don’t know what they can do about it, but they’ll probably close down the government. It’s so simple.”
Trump tied the looming funding fight to health care, accusing Democrats of driving steep increases in Affordable Care Act premiums scheduled for next year.
He mocked the law with a familiar nickname while distancing himself from its consequences.
“But it was always no good, but now it’s really gone,” Trump said. “Remember, I didn’t do this. This is ObamaCare, this is ObamaCare. This isn’t Trump. But you don’t need it.”
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The president also targeted the insurance industry, referring to insurers as “big monster companies,” while promising reforms aimed at lowering costs for Americans.
He said Americans will have “great health care at the right price,” adding that he plans to meet with insurance company executives alongside pharmaceutical and drug company leaders.
“So rather than just saying, ‘We’re not going to deal,’ maybe they’ll give us a deal by cutting prices by 50 percent, and maybe this makes sense,” Trump said.
The health care dispute played a major role in the most recent shutdown, when Senate Democrats pressured Republicans to negotiate an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Those enhanced subsidies, originally expanded during the COVID era, are set to lapse at the end of the year.
Eight Democratic senators ultimately voted to reopen the government without securing any conditions tied to extending the subsidies, but the issue remains unresolved.
Without action, monthly insurance premiums are projected to surge for millions of Americans, a development Democrats believe gives them leverage in upcoming negotiations.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, said he is content to let voters decide where blame falls if the subsidies expire.
He defended GOP efforts to pursue alternative reforms rather than continuing what he described as a flawed system.
“We will allow the American people to be able to make decisions on that, where they see where the problem actually originated from,” Lankford said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Lankford was responding to comments from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, who warned that her party could face political consequences for failing to act on the subsidies.
“When people feel that they have counted on or waited for their Congress to act on an issue that they feel is a huge priority, and they see no action, there’s consequence to that,” Murkowski said in remarks aired Sunday.
“As the party in charge, we have got a responsibility to figure it out,” she added. “And so I do think that there are ramifications if we fail to act on this.”
Lankford countered that continuing to prop up the Affordable Care Act masks deeper structural problems, arguing that subsidies primarily benefit insurance companies rather than patients.
“Just in my state, we took a six-year snapshot. The ObamaCare marketplaces went up 198 percent during that time period,” he pointed out.
“Normal insurance, commercial insurance for everybody else went up 29 percent during that time period.”
“There are real structural problems in ObamaCare that had just been hidden with one subsidy after another after another to try to hide the problems that are there,” he added.
House Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing forward with plans to force a vote on extending the subsidies. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last weekend that such an extension would pass with support from both parties.
“House Democrats are going to continue to fight to get this extension through the Congress on our side. It will pass with a bipartisan majority,” Jeffries commented during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week.”
Before leaving Washington for the holidays, four House Republicans joined 214 Democrats in signing a discharge petition to bring a three-year extension of the subsidies to the House floor.
Speaker Mike Johnson declined to schedule a vote before adjournment, leaving the matter unresolved until January.
If the House approves the extension, Jeffries said pressure will mount on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Republicans to reverse course after a similar proposal failed earlier this month due to GOP opposition, setting the stage for another high stakes showdown as the funding clock ticks down.
