00:01Well, good afternoon everybody. We just had a very frank conversation with the Senate and House Democratic leadership.
00:07Look, the principle at stake here is very simple.
00:09We have disagreements about tax policy, but you don't shut that government down.
00:12We have disagreements about health care policy, but you don't shut the government down.
00:15You don't use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops,
00:20to not have essential services of government actually function.
00:23You don't say the fact that you disagree about a particular tax provision is an excuse for shutting down the people's government
00:30and all the essential services that come along with it.
00:32If you look at what Chuck Schumer has said in the past consistently,
00:35it's whatever our disagreements are, let's negotiate with them.
00:38Let's talk about them. Let's figure out a bipartisan solution.
00:41But you don't shut the government down.
00:43In other words, you don't put a gun to the American people's head and say,
00:46unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do,
00:50we're going to shut down your government.
00:51That's exactly what they're proposing out there.
00:53Now, we have to remember, they're very frustrated.
00:55They say that they're very frustrated about the fact that this negotiation has not taken place until today.
01:00But if you look at the original thing they did with this negotiation,
01:05it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying to the American people,
01:09we want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care,
01:14while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills.
01:17That was their initial foray into this negotiation.
01:20We thought it was absurd.
01:22We told them it was absurd.
01:23And 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.
01:29We think that's preposterous.
01:30We think it's totally unacceptable.
01:32And we think the American people are going to suffer because these guys won't do the right thing.
01:37Now, I want to make one final point here.
01:39You will hear a lot from Senate Democrats, from House Democrats about the fact that American health care policy is broken.
01:45Well, we know that American health care policy is broken.
01:47We've been trying to fix it for the eight months that we've been in office.
01:50But every single thing that they accused about being broken about American health care is policy the Democrats have supported for the past decade.
01:58So if they want to talk about how to fix American health care policy, let's do it.
02:01The Speaker would love to do it.
02:02The Senate majority leader would love to do it.
02:04Let's work on it together.
02:06But let's do it in the context of an open government that's providing essential services to the American people.
02:11That's all that we're proposing to do.
02:13And the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position is.
02:17I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing.
02:20I hope they change their mind, but we're going to see.
02:22I'll let the Speaker say a few words.
02:25Thank you, Vice President Vance.
02:27I want to thank the President as well.
02:28They showed strong leadership today.
02:30They invited the four leaders over here because the President is operating in good faith, and he demonstrated that very well.
02:36The problem is that Chuck Schumer and Leader Jeffries refused to acknowledge the simple facts.
02:42Let's review what the simple facts are.
02:44As the Vice President was saying, this is the common sense thing to do.
02:48This is the right thing to do.
02:49This is the simple thing to do.
02:51By way of review, the House is getting back to the way the regular appropriations process is supposed to work.
02:57Twelve separate appropriations bills passed through the House Appropriations Committee, three off the floor.
03:02The Senate is doing their work as well.
03:04All this in bipartisan fashion, by the way.
03:06They passed three bills in the Senate.
03:08Those bills don't match up exactly.
03:10For the first time in years, since 2019, you have a conference committee that is being constituted between the House and the Senate.
03:17This is the way the bill comes along.
03:19They work out the differences.
03:20All this is happening in bipartisan fashion.
03:23The problem is we've run out of clock.
03:25September 30th is the end of the fiscal year, so we need a little more time.
03:29So what we did in the Republican majority is the right, responsible, simple thing.
03:41Leader Thune has a copy if you want to see the exhibit.
03:44There's nothing partisan in here.
03:45No policy writers.
03:46None of our big party preferences.
03:48Because we want to do the right thing by the American people and allow more time for negotiation.
03:53Now, there's a reason that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have come out here, stopped the feed, saying that they can't go along with this.
04:00They're trying to bring in extraneous issues.
04:02They issued a counterproposal.
04:03You should go take a look at what they requested.
04:05$1.5 trillion in new spending that is unrelated to the ongoing appropriations process.
04:12They wanted to, as you said, restore taxpayer-funded benefits, okay?
04:16Hard-working taxpayers in America.
04:18They want to take your funds and give that for benefits to illegal aliens.
04:23They want to restore that because we got rid of them.
04:25They want to prop up left-leaning media outlets.
04:28$500 million they threw in on top of that.
04:30$1.5 trillion on a seven-week stopgap funding measure.
04:35We're not going to do that.
04:37They know we can't do that.
04:38And we never have in the past.
04:40During the Biden administration, there were 13 threatened shutdowns.
04:43The Republicans in the minority did the right thing.
04:46We kept the government open.
04:47We're simply asking for the Democrats to do the same.
04:50Again, I want to thank President Trump for the strong, solid leadership.
04:54He listened to the arguments, and they just wouldn't acknowledge the simple facts.
04:58I want to thank the Vice President here for showing his leadership as well.
05:02If the Democrats make the decision to shut the government down, the consequences are on them.
05:07And I think it's absolutely tragic.
05:09We've never said that was a good idea.
05:11We never believed it is.
05:12And I want you to remember, when we voted in the House, we passed it out of the House.
05:16The House has done its job.
05:18We did that almost two weeks ago.
05:19Every Democrat in the House except one voted to shut the government down.
05:23That is the record.
05:24And don't forget it.
05:26Step in here.
05:28This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is what we're talking about.
05:33Twenty-four pages.
05:34Continuing resolution to fund the government through November the 21st.
05:38I don't know where they're saying this is some huge partisan thing.
05:43This is something we do fairly routinely.
05:45And when the Democrats had the majority, on 13 different occasions, they had the majority.
05:49President Biden was in the White House.
05:51We passed continuing resolutions to fund the government.
05:54This is purely and simply a hostage statement on behalf of the Democrats.
06:00Republicans are united.
06:02House Republicans, Senate Republicans, President Trump.
06:06The House has passed a clean funding resolution to fund the government until November the 21st.
06:10It's clean, it is bipartisan, and it is short-term.
06:15But it gives us enough time to finish the appropriations process, which is the way we should be funding the government.
06:21So Republicans in the House, Senate, President United, they passed the bill.
06:26This is sitting right now at the Senate desk.
06:29We could pick it up and pass it tonight.
06:31We could pick it up and pass it tomorrow before the government shuts down.
06:35And then we don't have the government shut down.
06:37It is totally up to the Democrats, because right now they are the only thing standing between the American people and the government shutting down.
06:45We're all in favor of funding the government.
06:47And this is something that's been done routinely, 13 different times by the Democrats when they had the majority.
06:52So, to me, this is purely a hostage-taking exercise on the part of the Democrats.
06:58We 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.
07:05We're happy to have that conversation.
07:07But as of right now, this is a hijacking of the American people, and it's the American people that are going to pay the price.
07:15Mr. Vice President, do you want to say a favor?
07:17Sure.
07:18Sure.
07:19We want to keep this government open.
07:21It is not good for the American people that have the government shut down for any period of time.
07:26We will manage it appropriately, but it is something that can all be avoided.
07:30It can all be avoided by accepting the reasonable position, which is what the House has passed and which sits at the Senate desk,
07:36which is to continue to fund the government with a short-term continuing resolution.
07:41It has never been a good-day viewpoint that $1.5 trillion is a reasonable amount of spending to be included on a short-term CR.
07:52This is hostage-taking.
07:53It is not something that we are going to accept.
07:55And we hope that the Democrats come back from the brink, fund this government, and allow us to move forward.
08:02Great.
08:03Mr. Vice President, so just to be clear, is there room for negotiation here with Democrats?
08:07And you mentioned you believe that we are headed toward a government shutdown.
08:11Is the federal government preparing to fire federal workers if the government does indeed shut down?
08:16Well, first of all, we have to keep essential services functioning as well as possible if the Democrats shut down the government.
08:21And Russ has been tasked with making sure that's possible.
08:23Now, you asked about negotiations.
08:25One 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 Akeem Jeffries,
08:31was, you know, yeah, they have some crazy ideas.
08:34Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for health care, that's a crazy idea.
08:37Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea.
08:41But they had some ideas that I actually thought were reasonable.
08:43And they had some ideas that the President thought was reasonable.
08:45What's not reasonable is to hold those ideas as leverage and to shut down the government unless we give you everything that you want.
08:52There were multiple times where Leader Jeffries or Leader Schumer would say, you know what, we should be doing this.
08:58And the President of the United States would say, yeah, absolutely, let's have that conversation.
09:01But we're going to do it in the context of the people's government being open.
09:05We're not going to let you take the people's government hostage and then give you everything you want.
09:09And that's really the state of the negotiation.
09:11Yeah, let's have a conversation.
09:13Let's have a negotiation.
09:14We're not going to shut down the government because we won't give the Democrats everything that they want.
09:19Can you respond to what Senator Schumer said, that there were aspects about health care ending for certain people that the President was learning about for the first time at that meeting?
09:26And was the President open to a deal on the ACA subsidies?
09:30Well, I'm highly skeptical that the President was learning about it for the first time, thanks to Chuck Schumer.
09:35But what I will say is, look, we have put a $50 billion rural hospital fund into the actual, the big, beautiful bill that we passed a few months ago.
09:43Because we know that under Biden administration's policies, there are a lot of small town hospitals, a lot of rural health care that was getting shut down and that was struggling.
09:50We're trying to fix that problem.
09:52In fact, we're happy to work with Democrats to fix that problem.
09:55We want to work across the aisle to make sure that people have access to good health care.
09:59We are not going to let Democrats shut down the government, take a hostage unless we give them everything that they want.
10:05That's not how the people's government has ever worked.
10:07That's certainly not how it's going to work under the Trump administration.
10:10This is very important on health care.
10:13Their 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.
10:22They want to take that back.
10:23We're not going to do that.
10:24We passed that because we have to allow for that.
10:27Also, 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, Infinite Children, they will not get that program.
10:38It will not be funded.
10:39FEMA won't be funded.
10:40We have hurricanes off the coast of the United States right now.
10:43This is serious business.
10:44You have telehealth.
10:46You have mental health services.
10:47All that that's funded by the government would stop if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats have their way.
10:52The Democrat shutdown would be damaging for the country.
10:55We can't allow for it.
10:56Was there any mention of passing a shorter CR?
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