LEADER JEFFRIES ON CNN: “THEY ARE INTENTIONALLY WITHHOLDING SNAP BENEFITS FROM PEOPLE”

Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on CNN's First of All, where he made clear that Democrats remain ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan spending agreement that protects the healthcare of the American people and ends the Trump-Republican shutdown.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Joining us now live, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, thank you for being with me.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Good morning, great to be with you.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: So let me start here with the news overnight. And I'll get to the machinations there in Congress, but your reaction to this hold on the administration being required to immediately pay out full SNAP benefits.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Donald Trump and his administration have made the decision to weaponize hunger, to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of people, notwithstanding the fact that two lower courts, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals, made clear that those SNAP benefits needed to be paid immediately. The administration chose to go begging before the United States Supreme Court to put a halt on that because they want to withhold SNAP benefits from children, from veterans, from seniors, from American families, and it's shameful.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Hungry children, Leader Jeffries, don't know if they're not being fed because of a lack of SNAP benefits or a lack of their parents' federal salary. And so when Democrats voted yesterday to not pay federal workers, is that something you would have supported?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, from the standpoint of the votes in the Senate, I think what's become clear is that, as Democrats, we are ready, we're willing, we're able to sit down with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, find a bipartisan path forward to reopening the government, to enacting a spending agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people and also, at the same time, decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis, particularly as it relates to the need to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are going to trigger, in the absence of doing that, dramatically increased premiums, copays and deductibles on working-class Americans. The legislation yesterday, Victor, would have actually given the Trump administration the discretion to do what it wants to do relative to which federal employees it pays, which federal employees it doesn't pay, how to maneuver through the offices that they've been shutting down for months, even prior to the start of the Trump-Republican government shutdown, so it wasn't a credible effort by Republicans to try to resolve this challenge.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Alright, let's talk about efforts to resolve this. Do you fully support the proposal that the Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer proposed yesterday, a one-year extension of the ACA tax credit, the subsidies that expire at the end of the year, and then open the government and discuss everything else after that?

LEADER JEFFRIES: I think that the proposal was offered in good faith by Leader Schumer and supported by Senate Democrats. And our view has been that we would consider anything as House Democrats that is arrived at in a bipartisan way, that emerges from the Senate, that reopens the government, that provides us with a path toward decisively addressing the Republican healthcare crisis, beginning with the extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We haven't had an opportunity as a Caucus to sit down and evaluate the specifics of the proposal. We'll do that as House Democrats in short order-

VICTOR BLACKWELL: But how about the headline? How about the headline?

LEADER JEFFRIES: -but it was a strong, reasonable step in the right direction.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: So you would-you call it a reasonable step in the right direction for a one-year extension to get the government back open. Let me play for everyone what you said in October, this October 7th, about a one-year extension when it was proposed then.

VIDEO OF LEADER JEFFRIES: A one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits is not acceptable. It's a non-starter. It's a non-starter. Like, what world are these MAGA extremists living in right now to think that Democrats are going to go along with a one-year extension from a group of people, meaning the Republicans, who just permanently extended massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors. It's a laughable proposition. It makes no sense.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Makes no sense, laughable, non-starter then. Now it's reasonable and it's the Democratic starting point. What changed?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, let me compare the two things. What I was responding to was a proposal by a handful of House Republicans who put forward the notion that they are up to extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits by a year, who have zero credibility on the issue. They hadn't even been able to convince their own House Republican leaders, beginning with Speaker Johnson, to even put the legislation on the floor to House. It wasn't a serious proposal being put forward by these random House Republicans.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: The legislation that's sponsored by-but it's also some House Democrats who support that legislation as well. It's a bipartisan piece of legislation.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah. Well, and-it's a bipartisan piece of legislation-and those House Democrats are proceeding in good faith. That said, if you look at the Schumer proposal, the Schumer proposal is a one-year extension of the tax credits, as is, and a step toward a multi-year extension because there's a recognition by the Senate Democrats that, of course, simply taking the step toward a year without any further process moving forward beyond that leaves us back in the same situation. So, the Senate proposal is definitively different than what was being floated out there by House Republicans.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Leader Jeffries, there are some people who don't know what a clean CR is and don't care. They just need to be able to pay their rent and feed their children. I want you to listen to some of the people who are going without now on day 39. And then I want your reaction and response.

VIDEO OF ASHLEE TARR: I was born with a mild form of cerebral palsy, so I've been disabled since birth. So I rely on Food Stamps and Social Security to survive. I've been struggling. It's been really hard. I've literally been eating spaghetti for four days because it's all I have in my apartment.

VIDEO OF ONITA MORRIS: Rather than myself having like a full plate of food along with my kids, I'm making sure that they have a full plate of food and their bellies are full and I may have either less or I may not eat what they are eating just for the sake that they are getting enough. I just don't understand how we've come to a point where we're using food in politics and being essentially political pawns.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: What do you say to the people and maybe listen, some of them might even support your end goal, but they have to feed their children this morning and tomorrow morning and the morning after that. What do you tell them?

LEADER JEFFRIES: That the administration has the funds to pay every single SNAP beneficiary right now, and that the administration's decision, a decision made by Donald Trump, supported by his so-called Attorney General, and House and Senate Republicans, is to weaponize hunger. And the refusal to pay SNAP benefits has nothing to do with the fact that Republicans also shut the government down. Keep in mind, Victor, that in July, in connection with their One Big Ugly Bill, Republicans, in addition to the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, cut $186 billion out of SNAP. They literally ripped food out of the mouths of hungry children, seniors and veterans, and they did it so they could reward their billionaire donors with massive tax breaks that they then made permanent. And now, as we are in the midst of this ongoing Republican-Trump shutdown, they are intentionally withholding SNAP benefits from people all across the country. 42 million Americans, 16 million children, 8 million older Americans and over a million veterans. It's outrageous. There's no justification for it. And those SNAP benefits, as ordered by two different federal courts, should be paid immediately.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: I'll point out that there are people in the same food line for help that are not getting their SNAP benefits, who are federal workers as well who are not getting their salaries. And we talked about the vote yesterday in the Senate against paying those employees. Leader Hakeem Jeffries, thank you so much for your time.

Full interview can be watched here.

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