STATEMENT: Sen. Schiff Blasts Republicans’ Refusal to Negotiate as Fourth Government Shutdown Under President Trump Begins

Schiff: "We are ready to negotiate an end to this. We want to see an end to this. Democrats didn't want to see a shutdown at all, but it requires the Republicans to come to the table."

Washington, D.C. - At midnight today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) released a video statement outlining the events that led to the current federal government shutdown, including President Donald Trump and Republican Congressional leadership's refusal to negotiate with Democrats to protect millions of Americans from facing drastically higher health care costs or loss of coverage.

In the statement, Schiff also discussed the impacts of this new Trump shutdown and his commitment to bringing an end to the current impasse.

Senator Schiff has launched a Frequently Asked Questions webpage to address Californians' concerns about government services affected by a shutdown. That page can be found on his website here.

Watch the video HERE. Download the video HERE.

Read the full transcript below:

Schiff: So, about a minute ago, the government, the U.S. government shutdown. How did we get here? Who's responsible? What do we do to get the government reopened, and what are the consequences for people during the course of the shutdown?

Well, first of all, let's talk about how we got here and who's responsible for this self-inflicted wound to the American economy. Here's Donald Trump.

Trump: If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States. He's the one that has to get people together.

Schiff: Okay, that was Donald Trump talking about who's responsible for a shutdown before he was president. As you might imagine, he's not blaming himself now, although he should. He's the President of the United States. Republicans control the House. Republicans control the Senate. Arguably, they control the Supreme Court of the United States. They control everything. They have responsibility to govern, and they can't meet that responsibility.

Donald Trump was supposed to be the great negotiator. Wasn't interested in negotiating a budget.

In fact, part of the reason we are at this shutdown in this moment is that Democrats urged the president to get together with our leadership and hammer out some agreement to avoid a shut down. And Trump initially agreed, and then said no, cancelled the meeting, only deciding last minute he would meet with Democratic leadership the day before the shutdown. And after those negotiations, if that's what you would call it, after that White House meeting, here was the mature reaction of the President of the United States. [Clip on screen]

That's right, he posts this social media clip. Now I'm not going to play this for you. This was an AI fake video in which they use Schumer's voice to make all these kinds of disparaging remarks. It was a ugly, juvenile display, a bigoted display by the President of the United States. That was his mature response after meeting with Democrats to try to avoid a shutdown. So, yes, this is what happens when you have a president unwilling to do their job.

Now in terms of what happens, the President has been threatening that if the government shutdown, that he would use that opportunity, that excuse, to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers. The reality is, he's been firing, illegally firing, federal workers ever since he took office, but he may continue his illegal rampage firing other federal workers. More recently, he made this threat.

Trump: Because of the shutdown, we can do things medically and other ways, including benefits. We can cut large numbers of people out. We don't want to do that, but we don't want fraud, waste and abuse. And you know, we're cutting that -

Schiff: So now he's threatening to cut benefits for people. Is that possible? Is that legal? Well, it's not legal. But with Donald Trump, anything is possible.

Normally, in a government shutdown, most of Medicare is unaffected. Most of Social Security payments go out unaffected. Most of Medicaid is unaffected. There are some smallish impacts that are still very significant to those programs, but most benefits go out. But all bets are off with Donald Trump, because he's threatened illegal action, and we have seen him take illegal action.

He has promised to protect things like Medicaid and then cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid, so we don't really know what kind of damage the president is about to inflict. But we do know this, when Donald Trump says, "I might cut benefits or I might fire people, I don't want to do this," of course, if he didn't want to do it, he wouldn't do it.

This is Donald Trump using a shutdown of his own creation to try to cause more harm, more cruelty to the American people. And it's going to be the American people that suffer from this Trump shutdown. And they will suffer because a lot of federal employees, hundreds of thousands of them, will be furloughed. Others who are essential workers, like air traffic controllers or TSA, they will still be required to show up at work, but they won't get paid, so they'll be forced to work without pay.

Now, all of these workers, whether they're furloughed or they're required to show up for work, all of them will receive back pay once the government shutdown is over. But nevertheless, this is a tremendous hardship for a lot of federal employees. That is, they still have rent to pay, they still have a mortgage to pay, they still have food to buy, they still have medicine to buy, and they're not going to get a paycheck during the course of this shutdown. In terms of the services Americans rely upon, veterans going to the VA, the VA should remain open, but it may not have the full panoply of services, like some of the counseling services may be unavailable for a time at the VA.

The Postal Service will continue to run. Other services as well, but some are in limbo. The Park Service, for example, the Federal Park Service. Many parks may close. Others might stay open but be unstaffed. Others may be open with no staffing and see the garbage piling up in the parks because there are no services being provided there.

People applying for passports should still be able to get passports. But over time, if the fees derived from the passport process aren't sufficient, you'll start to see delays in being able to access passports.

Many other services will seriously degrade because there simply isn't the federal personnel working to meet the needs of the American people.

And more broadly, you have this deep impact to the American economy, which is already in a fragile place. The stock market is doing well, but that's an outlier. This economy has produced almost no jobs in the last several months, some of the worst job growth numbers, really stagnant job growth since the pandemic and before that, since the great recession.

But one thing that has not stopped is inflation. Inflation continues to rise, and through the shutdown and through the president's unwillingness to address steep hikes in health care costs during this shutdown, it is very possible people will be getting notices that their health insurance costs are going up by hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month.

Indeed, this is what Democrats have been fighting to prevent in these budget negotiations. Our key demand in these budget negotiations has been, we'll fund some of your priorities, but our priority is making sure the American people can afford their health care. And so we need to stop these premium increases that are going to result from your elimination of tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. That's been a key priority for Democrats.

So, during the shutdown, people are likely to see notices about their health care costs going through the roof. And it's not just those costs. Utility bills are about to go up quite dramatically because the Trump administration is killing off renewable energy. More than 90% of new energy coming online is renewable. You take that power offline, you add the increased demand from these huge data centers, and utility bills are going through the roof.

So, the last thing we need during this period of increasing inflation, during this period of job stagnation, what is called stagflation, the last thing we need is a kind of body blow to the economy that comes with a government shutdown. But that is where Donald Trump is leading the country.

Now, we are ready to negotiate an end to this. We want to see an end to this. Democrats didn't want to see a shutdown at all, but it requires the Republicans to come to the table. It requires them to agree, not just to some of our priorities as Democrats and most particularly avoiding these health care costs increasing, but also it requires language in this legislation that prevents them from cheating on the deal once the deal is inked. Because what we've seen is, when we do reach a budget deal with the administration, the administration accepts the deal and then just decides they're not going to honor it.

So, we can't tolerate that anymore. Those I think are pretty reasonable requests that we have in this budget process.

The administration's position, though, is rather than provide any accommodation, any agreement, anything bipartisan with Democrats, they prefer to shut the whole thing down. And as a result, the American people are suffering.

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