With federal funding set to expire on Wednesday, Democrats are facing one of their biggest tests of the Trump era: whether to risk a government shutdown to secure major health care concessions, or accept a Republican stopgap bill.
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Few are pushing Democrats to hold the line more than Rep. Greg Casar, the 36-year-old Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, an influential bloc of nearly 100 House Democrats who represent the more liberal wing of the party. In an interview with TIME on Friday, just four days ahead of the shutdown deadline, Casar argued that Democrats can’t “settle for crumbs” and must fight harder than they did in March, when Senate Democrats helped Republicans avoid a shutdown without extracting any concessions, a decision that infuriated the Democratic base.
With midterm elections one year away, Casar sees this moment as an opportunity for Democrats to show voters they are the party representing working people. “I think that everyday people increasingly know that Donald Trump is horrible, but they question what Democrats are willing to stand up and fight for,” Casar says. “And I hope that we’re about to answer that question.”
While Casar, like the rest of the House Democrats, is limited in how much he can control over what his party does next, his voice represents a powerful barometer of how much pressure the progressive wing is putting on leadership to take a tougher stand. Any resolution of this standoff will ultimately fall to Senate Democrats, who must decide whether to provide the votes Republicans need to clear that chamber’s 60-vote threshold.
Progressive polling shows Democratic voters overwhelmingly want lawmakers to put up a fight on health care, even if it means risking a prolonged shutdown. But the fight grew more volatile this week, after the White House budget office ordered agencies to prepare mass layoffs in the event of a funding lapse, a sharp break from past practice. Trump has leaned into the threat, while also seeking to pin the blame for any closure on Democrats.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
TIME: We’re a few days from a possible government shutdown. What is the mood like in the Congressional Progressive Caucus at this moment?
Casar: Progressives and Democrats in Congress know that our country feels like it’s on the brink and our constituents are looking for a Democratic Party that is willing to stand and fight for them—for their health care, for their rights, for their wages and for the Constitution. And this shutdown showdown is a moment where Democrats have to choose whether we’re going to stand and fight or whether we are going to roll over and play dead.
And you know, there have been Democratic consultants that have suggested that the path forward for the Democratic Party is to roll over and play dead and win upcoming elections just based on Donald Trump being bad. But I think that everyday people increasingly know that Donald Trump is horrible, but they question what Democrats are willing to stand up and fight for. And I hope that we’re about to answer that question, which is that Democrats will stand and fight for you to be able to afford to see a doctor. And Democrats should be willing to stand and fight for the basic economic well being of everyday people.
TIME: What has the reaction been in your caucus to President Trump’s threats to lay off federal workers en masse if there’s a shutdown? Are you hearing anyone have second thoughts about the strategy?
Casar: First, let me say what Trump is talking about here is dangerous. Trump is basically threatening a needless, massive cut to programs people rely on. Second, I think Trump really sold out congressional Republicans here. Republicans in Congress wanted to lie and ask people to blame a shutdown on the Democrats, but Trump really gave away his entire plan here. He yelled the quiet part into a microphone, claiming, essentially, that Republicans are the ones that want to shut down the government, want to shut down programs intentionally, and want shutdowns to be even more painful than they otherwise would be.
So I think Democrats should take Trump at his word and make sure people understand the contrast here: that Republicans want to shut down the government and Democrats want to keep programs running, and want to make sure you can keep your health care, too.
TIME: But does it make you more or less willing to risk a shutdown?
Casar: I think the answer to your question is that Donald Trump has made it clear that he is already shutting down the government and is trying to shut down programs even further, and the question is whether or not Democrats are going to stand up against him, and the way to stand up to that — to the shutting down that’s been happening over the last nine months, and the shutting down that Trump is threatening here over the next month — is for Democrats to not continue to rubber stamp Trump’s budgets and Trump’s bills and at some point say, no, there is a clear line here that we’re not willing to cross.
TIME: Why health care? Democrats could have chosen any number of priorities to attach to this fight — from tariffs to corruption to ICE raids — instead your party has drawn a line around permanently extending Affordable Care Act tax credits and reversing Medicaid cuts. Why do you think health care was chosen as the hill to fight on? And do you think that focus is bold enough to energize voters who’ve been asking Democrats to fight harder?
Casar: Let’s start with the facts here. We’re hurdling towards a health care crisis because Trump wanted tax cuts for billionaires. Fifteen million people are about to lose their health care. That’s a life-or-death issue for some people. Twenty million more Americans could see their health care premiums nearly double. That could bankrupt people. And then everyone else beyond those 35 million people also get screwed, because when all of that money gets pulled out of the health care system, prices go up for everyone, hospitals close. There’s already news of rural clinics shutting down.
So in Washington, some people treat this health care fight as some kind of normal back and forth of politics—I think that’s totally wrong. If we had a functioning democracy, this would be treated as a real life-and-death health care crisis. So I think Democrats need to be willing to stand up and fight against millions of people losing their health care. We are not just picking a political issue. We are picking an issue that makes a real difference in the life of everyday people, whether they are engaged in the daily news or not.
TIME: You’ve argued that Democrats need to lean into economic populism to win voters back. Do you see this shutdown fight as a chance to make that case — and if so, how does the health care fight fit into that broader message?
Casar: Sixty years ago, everyone knew Democrats were the party that stood for working people against the rich and powerful. And today there’s confusion about who the Democrats are and what we stand for. We need to fix that problem, and so taking on big fights, both against Trump, but also for working class people, like fighting for health care for everybody, is the right thing to do — is how we show everyday people which party is really fighting for them. We have a chance this coming week to unite as congressional Democrats for working people, and I think our constituents are with us.
TIME: President Trump is trying to frame this as Democrats demanding “Medicaid for undocumented immigrants.” How do you respond to that charge?
Casar: Look, Trump is trying to hide the fact that virtually every single Republican in Congress just voted for his bill to kick 15 million U.S. citizens off of their health care. It’s the oldest trick in the book, where, when Trump gets in trouble, he starts mentioning an immigrant somewhere, but it wasn’t an immigrant that signed a bill into law to cause a health care crisis for everyday families. It wasn’t an immigrant who signed a bill into law that will close hospitals and clinics all across America. It was Donald Trump, and eventually people are going to get sick and tired of his B.S. strategy of trying to blame an immigrant for something that Donald Trump himself did.
TIME: Republicans are offering a clean, 7-week extension to keep the government open. Why not vote for that to avoid a shutdown and then negotiate with Republicans on ACA subsidies later? Thune and Johnson have already indicated they would be open to it.
Casar: The dirty bill that Thune and Johnson have called clean would walk us in on the path to 15 million Americans losing their health care. And I think that Democrats have a responsibility to our constituents and to our constituents health care. We don’t have a responsibility to vote for whatever bill that Donald Trump and the Republicans write entirely on their own. Only people in Washington, D.C. would call a plan to kick 15 million people off of their health care quote unquote clean. So, you know, Donald Trump said the other day that he would meet with Democratic leaders and then pulled the meeting at the last minute. I think it’s pretty clear that Donald Trump does not want a high-profile meeting covered in the news where Trump has to argue why he’s kicking people off of their health care to give billionaires a tax break while leaders of the Democratic Party argue that we want to fund the government and fund people’s health care. He just doesn’t want to have that conversation on television.
TIME: One historical parallel here is that in 2018, Democrats ended a shutdown after Mitch McConnell promised them a vote on Dreamers — a promise that failed to ever pass. Many progressives at the time saw that as surrendering leverage for nothing concrete. If Republicans now offered Democrats a similar off-ramp — say, a future vote on the ACA tax credits instead of putting it into the funding law — would you urge Senate Democrats to reject it?
Casar: We need to put up a real fight here, not a fake fight. So, you know, I think that it is really important for us to continue to press Trump and the Republicans to negotiate on this health care crisis. But Democrats can’t settle for crumbs here. And I think what you just described sounds much more like folding to me than fighting.
TIME: Who do you think will be held accountable if the government shuts down? Are you worried that it’ll be the Democrats?
Casar: Donald Trump, and people like Elon Musk waving a chainsaw around on stage, have made it very clear that they are the party of shutting down the government and taking people’s basic government services away from them. Traditionally, people in Washington do their best to make sure the other party gets blamed for a shutdown, but Donald Trump seems to be grabbing every microphone he can scream into to say it was us, the Republicans shut it down. House Republicans keep trying to blame this on the Democrats, but Trump turns to the camera and says, no, it’s me, blame me, Donald Trump. He called this meeting with Democratic leaders. He wouldn’t even sit down to talk.
We have the opportunity to vote to restore people’s health care and keep government funding open on Monday and Tuesday, Speaker Johnson is refusing to even bring the Republicans into Washington, D.C. And then Trump had [Director of the Office of Management and Budget] Russ Vought put into his OMB memo that they want to fire workers and cut services themselves, without the Democrats. So at the end of the day, I think Donald Trump is in some ways, doing things in a very strange and unhinged way that we haven’t seen in prior shutdown showdowns, where Donald Trump seems to be wanting to take the blame himself for shutting down government programs and laying off government workers.