Jeffries on Johnson’s near-term agenda: “chaos, cruelty and corruption”
The House Minority Leader says the speaker’s governing strategy—anchored by more reconciliation bills and steep cuts—threatens bipartisan cooperation on government funding and national defense.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Monday afternoon rejected a vow from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to pursue additional reconciliation bills and steep funding cuts, calling the House GOP’s legislative approach an attack on the American people.
The pushback comes a day after Johnson previewed an aggressively partisan agenda that includes bypassing Democrats on major legislation, codifying more of President Donald Trump’s executive orders and enacting spending levels below those agreed to for the current fiscal deadline. With the funding deadline and annual defense policy bill on the horizon, the stakes of bipartisan cooperation are rising, even as Republican leaders show little interest in it.
“The Republican legislative agenda in the House continues to be to unleash chaos, cruelty and corruption on the American people,” Jeffries told Once Upon a Hill. “We will continue as Democrats to strongly oppose it.”
The top House Democrat later told reporters that Republicans appear intent on grinding the appropriations process to a halt and undermining its significance by clawing back previously approved federal dollars.
“The only way to avoid a government shutdown that Republicans are clearly trying to trigger is for there to be bipartisan discussions about reaching a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” he said. “At this point, Mike Johnson continues to believe that they can operate in a partisan way, or potentially reach a bipartisan agreement and then break it immediately thereafter with this reckless rescissions approach.”