Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania appears to be on an island all to himself among Democrats over the looming government shutdown.
Mr. Fetterman is urging fellow Democrats to do what they can to stop a government shutdown, saying it will add to the ongoing political chaos that is hurting the nation and hand more power to the Trump administration.
Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over a spending deal that would keep non-essential government services running past Sept. 30.
Mr. Fetterman said he supports the Democrat push to extend health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are due to expire at the end of the year, but said that the fight should wait if it means avoiding a shutdown.
“Hey, I would love to restore a lot of those healthcare things, that is the right outcome, but that is a dangerous practice if you are going to shut the government down for one of our policies,” Mr. Fetterman said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mr. Fetterman said a shutdown will “have a profound impact on millions of Americans.”
“That is the wrong kind of chaos that our country needs right now in this time after the [Charlie] Kirk assassination and all of the other kinds of drama,” he said.
The House on Friday passed a short-term bill to keep the government open into the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, only to have it shot down in the Senate hours later, along with an alternative proposal from Democrats that featured their health care priorities.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Sunday the public will blame Republicans if the government shuts down, saying the current proposal has “zero input” from Democrats.
“There has been no negotiation with Republicans,” Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat, said in a separate appearance on “State of the Union.”
Mr. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have demanded a chance to sit down with President Trump to see if they can strike a deal.
“Right now it is a Trump shutdown because he won’t even talk to us,” Mr Schumer said. “He won’t even consider what the American people want, which is lowering costs; they don’t like his tariffs, they don’t like the healthcare stuff, and when you sit down and say it is my way or the highway, you are creating a shutdown.”
Mr. Schumer refused to say whether he would support a shutdown if the GOP did not heed his demands. “We must get a better bill,” he said.
Mr. Trump told reporters over the weekend that he will meet with Democrats, but was not optimistic about whether that would change anything.
“They want all this stuff. They don’t change,” Mr. Trump said Saturday. “I’d love to meet with them, but I don’t think it’s going to have an impact.”
On Sunday, Mr. Fetterman urged Democrats to give their strategy more thought.
He questioned why they would be willing to “turn over a shuttered government” to the Trump administration, which wants to “effectively remake” it in many ways.
“I refuse to be a part of things to empower individuals that really want to take away union workers and eliminate more kinds of parts of the government,” Mr. Fetterman said.
