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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday said Democrats would not be willing to compromise on their demands to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of this year, accusing Republicans of “not acting in good faith." "They're not acting in good faith as it relates to dealing with a healthcare crisis that they're visiting on the American people," he told NBC News' "Meet the Press" in an exclusive interview. Asked whether he believed the shutdown would end by Thanksgiving, in the next three weeks, Jeffries told "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker, "I hope so." "[President] Donald Trump needs to get off the golf course and get back to the negotiating table. He spent more time golfing over the last several weeks than he has talking to Democrats who represent half the country as part of an effort to find a bipartisan path forward," the House Minority Leader added. Democrats and Republicans are still in a stalemate as the federal government shutdown is set to drag into its 40th day on Monday. Last week, the ongoing funding lapse set a record for the longest federal government shutdown in American history. Jeffries' remarks come after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday proposed a path out of the shutdown that would have extended ACA subsidies for one year and would have created a bipartisan committee to look into longer-term solutions for the rising cost of ACA insurance premiums. Senate Majority Leader John Thune dismissed the proposal almost immediately, calling it a "non-starter." During a rare Saturday Senate session, Thune said, "the Democrats' proposal is just more of the same, masking rising premiums and padding insurance companies' profits with more taxpayer dollars. The Democrat leader's proposal is a non-starter.” The proposal was a step back from Democrats' previous position, when they said that a one-year extension wasn't satisfactory and called for a multi-year extension. Earlier in the shutdown, Democrats also called for a reversal of cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed earlier this year. “I’m willing to compromise,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who helped craft the proposal, said Friday. “But our Republican colleagues have to be willing to compromise, too.” The expiring ACA subsidies are the centerpiece of the shutdown fight, with Democrats pointing to the fact that insurance premiums for people who use ACA health insurance could double or triple in price next year if the subsidies expire at the end of December. Open enrollment for ACA healthcare plans began earlier this month. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who appeared on the program after Jeffries, blasted Democrats over the shutdown, telling Welker, "This shutdown is not about healthcare. This shutdown was really about Democrats saying they want to show their resistance to President Trump. They want to show they're fighting. They want to be able to energize their base." "The focus has really been on: we want to show we're fighting Trump because their base says 'you're not fighting hard enough,'" Lankford added. Over the weekend, Trump continued to blame Democrats for the shutdown as well, but on Saturday appeared — in a post on Truth Social — to offer a proposal for a new system of healthcare that would, "take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare." The proposal, the president wrote, was something he was "recommending to Senate Republicans." Lankford on Sunday called Trump's post "straightforward," saying, "the president's proposal was pretty straightforward. Stop sending money just to insurance companies and hope it gets better. Give Americans freedom of choice. If we're going to allow subsidies to get out there, get them to people, not to insurance companies." Democrats over the weekend, like Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., blasted Trump's posts, saying that he was proposing a plan to eliminate the healthcare system and give "people a few thousand dollars instead." Lankford dismissed Murphy's interpretation of Trump's proposal, telling "Meet the Press," "that's not what the proposal is. And I'm sure Senator Murphy knows that it makes for good politics, but that's not what it really is, and he knows it." The Oklahoma senator added, "This is not about wiping out all insurance." Still, Lankford was hopeful that the government would reopen by Thanksgiving. "I do. And it absolutely needs to," he said when asked if he thought the government shutdown would be over by the holiday. "It needs to be open today, if we can get it open." "On the health care issue, it's been fascinating," Lankford added, reiterating Trump and Senate Republicans' position since the start of the shutdown. "President Trump came out within the first week and said, 'If you want to talk about health care, we'll talk about health care as soon as the government is open.' Vice President [JD] Vance came forward, 'we'll talk about health care as soon as the government's open.' We're not going to negotiate while the government is shut down, which is the exact same position we've been in," the Oklahoma senator said.
