Vance slams Dems over shutdown, sets record straight on illegal alien healthcare

Vice President JD Vance on Monday blamed Democrats for the government shutdown and substantiated Republican assertions that the opposition sought to reinstate funding for illegal alien health care.

The government formally entered a shutdown at midnight on Monday morning after the Senate failed to approve a continuing resolution to fund the government.

"Democrats spent years giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens and, as promised, President Trump put a stop to it," he posted on X. "

Now, Senate Democrats are shutting down the government and holding the economy hostage because they want to reinstate those benefits for illegal aliens."

Accompanying his comments was a video of his Monday morning appearance on Fox News in which he discussed the issue.

"It's not something that we made up. It's not a talking point," he insisted. 

"There are two Biden-era programs that explicitly gave the taxpayer healthcare money to illegal aliens that we turned off when President Trump took over in January," he said. "Program number one is there's a lot of emergency health care at hospitals that are provided to illegal aliens. That was funded by the federal government."

"We turned off that funding because of course we want American citizens to benefit from those hospital services, not to be taxed and then to have those hospital services go to illegal aliens," Vance went on. "The second of which is the Biden administration gave mass parole to millions upon millions of illegal aliens and then they simultaneously made those parolees eligible for healthcare benefits funded by taxpayers."

"In the One Big, Beautiful Bill, President Trump and congressional Republicans turned off that money for healthcare to illegal aliens. The Democrats want to turn it back on," he concluded.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.