Vice President J.D. Vance says Democrats are playing word games when they claim the government shutdown is not driven by the party’s demand to provide health care for illegal immigrants.
“There’s always a sleight of hand. The Democrats play tricks with words here,” Vance said in a video posted to social media platform X.
“There are two very specific ways — and you can look at the legislative text — two specific ways in which the Democrats are asking us to give taxpayer-funded health care benefits for illegal aliens,” he said.
????NEW: @JDVance joins @benshapiro and DEBUNKS the Democrats’ claim that the gov. shutdown is NOT about taxpayer healthcare benefits for illegal aliens:
“The Democrats play tricks with words…There are two very specific ways…in which the Democrats are asking us to give… pic.twitter.com/FnhsmY136z
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 1, 2025
Vance said illegal aliens have clogged the health care system, increasing wait times for Americans.
“The reason that is, is because, under the Biden administration, we would pay all of the hospital benefits for illegal aliens if they went to an American hospital. Now that’s bad for American citizens who want to use those services. It’s also bad for American taxpayers, who don’t want to pay for illegal aliens to use those services,” he said.
The Trump administration “turned that program off in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said. “The Democrats want to turn it back on, and that would cost, again, hundreds of billions of dollars.”
“There’s a second way they want to pay for health care benefits for illegal aliens, and to get into the weeds a little bit, if you remember, the Biden administration did mass parole. So they took millions of illegal aliens, they would wave the magic wand of amnesty and say, ‘No, no, no. These are no longer illegal aliens. They are now parolees, because we’re not going to deport them,” Vance said.
Participants in that program also received taxpayer-funded health care benefits, he said.
“We turned that off as well, and Democrats want to turn it back on. So it’s just a matter of fact, as much as they to change the words that they use and hide from the reality of the policy, it’s a matter of fact that there are two programs that total hundreds of billions of dollars — taxpayer-funded health care benefits for illegal aliens. The Trump administration turned it off. Democrats want to turn it back on.”
He added, “It’s not just that we have a policy disagreement here, as crazy as that one is, it’s not just [that] they want to turn those benefits for illegal aliens back on, it’s that they’re willing to say that our troops aren’t going to get paid until Donald Trump relents and turns those benefits for illegal aliens back on,” he said.
“It’s preposterous. It’s bad policy. But we also are not going to negotiate” while being held hostage, he said, adding that the federal government shut down “because the Democrats have taken it hostage.”
Vance said addressing policy differences can happen once Democrats vote for the existing Republican bill that reopens the federal government.
“Turn the government back on, and then we can have a debate about health care policy, that they seem to want to have,” he said.
Vance said Democrats have put in writing that they want the programs restored, according to Fox News.
“So it’s not something that we made up,” Vance said. “It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government. It’s preposterous for [Democrats] to run away from it now.”
Vance noted that Democrats are distorting the truth by staging a shutdown now, according to Politico.
“That premium support program doesn’t even expire until next year. So why are you shutting down the government on Oct. 1 because of a program that doesn’t even expire for another few months?” he said. “Let’s talk about it, let’s negotiate, let’s do what you do in Washington, D.C.”
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