Republicans and Democrats met on Monday in a last-ditch effort to avoid a government shutdown, and things did not go well. Vice President JD Vance and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson held a presser outlining the hypocritical hostage taking being attempted, even as Democrat leaders continue to insist Republicans will be responsible for any disruption. 

Vance led things off, laying out that a shutdown appears imminent. 

Vice President @JDVance comes out minutes after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pitched a fit about Republicans not caving to their demands ahead of a government shutdown.

“We have disagreements…but you don’t shut the government… pic.twitter.com/EEfW8A1wGM

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 29, 2025

VANCE: You don’t put a gun to the American people’s head and say, “Unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we’re going to shut down your government.” That’s exactly what they’re proposing out there. Now, we have to remember they’re very frustrated. They say that they’re very frustrated about the fact that this negotiation has not taken place until today. 

But if you look at the original, the original thing they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying to the American people, “We want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills.” 

That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd, we told them it was absurd, and now they come in and say, “If you don’t give us everything that we want, we’re going to shut down the government.”

Shutdown fights have to be the most mind-numbing political exercise in existence, mostly because Democrats have repeatedly gotten away with taking both sides of the issue depending on who is in power. In fact, the general rule seems to be that no matter what happens, a shutdown is always the fault of Republicans. 

It’s a clown-nose-on, clown-nose-off routine where the GOP is blamed for shutdowns, whether they are in the minority or the majority. If Republicans block a continuing resolution, they are responsible. If they pass a continuing resolution and Democrats then block it, well, Republicans are still responsible despite that being a complete reversal of roles. It’s insulting gaslighting that has been propagated by the mainstream press for decades now. 

Johnson likewise lit into Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, exposing the wasteful giveaways Democrats are demanding to keep the government open. 

.@SpeakerJohnson NUKES congressional Democrats for poisoning the well on government funding negotiations:

“Now, there’s a reason that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have come out here stomp the feet, saying that they can’t go along with this. They’re trying to bring in… pic.twitter.com/4yoQvJvHW5

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 29, 2025

JOHNSON: Now, there’s a reason that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have come out here to stomp their feet, saying that they can’t go along with this. They’re trying to bring in extraneous issues. They issued a counterproposal. You should go take a look at what they requested. $1.5 trillion in new spending that is unrelated to the ongoing appropriations process. 

They wanted to, as you said, restore taxpayer-funded benefits? Okay, hardworking taxpayers in America, they want to they want to take your funds and give them to illegal aliens. They want to restore that because we got rid of it. They want it. They want to prop up left-leaning media outlets. 500 million they threw in on top of that, $1.5 trillion on a seven-week stopgap funding measure. 

We’re not going to do that. They know we can’t do that, and we never have. In the past, during the Biden administration, there were 13 threatened shutdowns. The Republicans in the minority did the right thing. We kept the government open. We’re simply asking for the Democrats to do the same…

…If the Democrats make the decision to shut the government down, the consequences are on them, and I think it’s absolutely tragic.

Republicans must keep hammering away at this. During prior shutdown fights, we have been repeatedly told that a minority party that refuses to pass a clean continuing resolution is responsible for any shutdown that happens. Why should that standard suddenly change? And if that standard were to change, it would mean Democrats could essentially rule as a minority party by leveraging shutdown after shutdown to garner all their priorities. How is that fair to the American voters who chose to put Republicans in power? 

With that said, even if the polls end up showing that the GOP will be blamed, and given the misleading coverage we’ll get from the mainstream media, that might happen, it still shouldn’t affect this process. You can not give in to Democrats in this situation in the vain hope of avoiding some bad press. Republicans are always going to get bad press anyway, and setting that precedent would be devastating in the future.