Democrats shut down the government because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is afraid he will lose his Senate seat to radical leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a party primary, Vice President JD Vance said at a Wednesday press briefing.
“Why did this happen? Why did the Democrats shut down the government despite, as [White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt] said, voting on the exact same piece of legislation six months ago?” Vance asked rhetorically.
“One answer I already gave is that they want to give health care benefits to illegal aliens,” he said. “That is true. They gave us legislative text that would have undone us cutting off health care benefits for illegal aliens. That’s one of the things that they asked for.”
“But the reality here, and let’s be honest about the politics, is that Chuck Schumer is terrified he’s going to get a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Vance continued. “The reason why the American people’s government is shut down is because Chuck Schumer is listening to the far-left radicals in his own party because he’s terrified of a primary challenge.”
Schumer would be up for reelection in 2028.
Vance invited Schumer to join moderate Democrats and 52 Senate Republicans who voted to keep the government open. He said that Republicans are “willing to have that conversation” on how to fix American health care, but that “we’ve got to reopen the government first.”
“Democrats say that they care a lot about lowering health care costs, and yet, when the president took historic action to work with the drug companies to lower prescription-drug prices, the Democrats did nothing to help us,” Vance said. “In fact, we would have loved to have the Democrats helping us, but they didn’t.”
“What they have done instead is to shut down the government because we won’t give billions of dollars to health care funding for illegal aliens,” the vice president said.
Vance blamed Schumer for the suffering of Americans who have lost their jobs and paychecks because of the shutdown.
“Our troops are not getting paid starting today because of the Chuck Schumer wing of the Democratic Party,” he said. “We have people who require food assistance, low-income Americans who require food assistance, who will not get it unless we reopen the government. Thanks to Chuck Schumer and his wing of the Democratic Party, we have flood insurance as we start hurricane season in the southeastern part of our country, that flood insurance is going to disappear because of Chuck Schumer and the far Left of the Democratic Party.”
Related posts:
- Schumer Threatens Government Shutdown, Something He, Other Senate Dems Decried as ‘Chaos’ in March
- Schumer Prepares for Battle in Shutdown Showdown
- ‘Let’s Get This Done’: Republicans Seek to Wear Down Democrats’ Resistance Amid Shutdown