Hakeem Jeffries

This agreement funds SNAP and food assistance programs, ensures that law enforcement, air traffic controllers, and other federal workers get paid, reverses the president's recent reckless layoffs and prevents them from happening in the future, and crucially,

gives Congress a clear path forward to protecting people's health care.

We're not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people.

And we're going to continue the fight to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Well, we need to end the Trump-Republican shutdown, the longest shutdown, of course, in American history.

And as Democrats, we've repeatedly maintained that we will sit down anytime, anyplace, with anyone in order to reopen the government, to find a bipartisan path forward to enacting a spending agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people, which means trying to drive down the high cost of living, because America, under Donald Trump and Republican policies, has become far too expensive.

while at the same time dealing with the Republican health care crisis that threatens to drive up premiums, copays and deductibles to levels that will be unaffordable for working class Americans because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

I don't think that the House Democratic Caucus is prepared to support a promise, a wing and a prayer.

If we're going to allow subsidies to get out there, get them to people, not the insurance company.

Tens of millions of Americans are going to wake up to the reality that their premiums, co-pays, and deductibles are about to explode.

It's day 23.

And I'm curious, sort of what has changed between day one, the start of the shutdown and today in terms of the conversation and how you're feeling about where things are?

Well, as Democrats, we continue to make clear to our Republican colleagues that we will sit down with them anytime, anyplace in order to reopen the government and

to negotiate a bipartisan agreement that actually makes life better for the American people in terms of spending and funding.

But we also have to decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.

We've maintained that position from the very beginning, before Republicans shut the government down and during the entirety of the shutdown, because it is a real crisis that has been created.

at this moment, particularly as it relates to the urgent need to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

As you and I are speaking, the House Speaker is doing a press conference just down the hall.

What is the level of engagement?

Do you pass one another?