Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday for the government shutdown but added that he needs to be part of any negotiations to continue funding the government.

“The American people know the Republicans have the presidency, they have the Senate, they have the House, and the blame will be on them,” Schumer told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe.”

“They will have to negotiate with us,” he added.

Republicans, Schumer continued, are willing to “sit down and negotiate,” but Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) need to be involved.

“Johnson’s been the real bad guy in this,” Schumer said. “If you want to know who wanted a shutdown, there’s one sentence that proves it. Johnson had … the House not even be in session when the shutdown occurs. How do you negotiate like that?”

“So, the bottom line is we need Johnson and Thune, [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)] and I, and the president, to come up with a solution,” Schumer continued. “We’re ready and willing and able to do it right now, immediately.”

Late Tuesday night, Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on a stopgap funding bill to keep the government running.

Both sides blamed the other for the shutdown. Thune told reporters that Senate Democrats chose “to shut down the government over a clean, nonpartisan funding bill” because “far left interest groups and far left Democrat members wanted a showdown with the president.”

Schumer and Jeffries have called on Republicans to negotiate about health care measures, including Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of 2025.

The shutdown marks the first government shutdown since Trump’s first term from December 2018 into January 2019, when a fight over border wall funding led to a 35-day shutdown, the longest in American history.