Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats shouldn’t support a clean stopgap spending bill and that the party should use the deadline to push for an end to the U.S. war in Iran and to avoid Medicaid coverage losses that will start January 1.
“I do not believe that we should be voting for a clean CR and giving a blank check to the president just a few short weeks before a new Democratic Congress gets sworn in,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video clip of her remarks.
Currently, the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution (CR), which runs through December 11; Congress passed the legislation in September to prevent a shutdown before the midterms. A clean CR extends existing funding without policy changes. Though Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the November 3 elections, the new Congress won’t be sworn in until January 3, meaning the funding fight is left up to the outgoing Congress in its post-election session.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that Democrats shouldn’t allow the deadline to go by without a fight, even if they disagree on what to ask for.
“I think I personally I believe that the CR, we have to put up a fight. My view, we should be putting up a fight on the CR,” she said, adding, “Now we may have differences on what that should be.”
First, she mentioned the war in Iran, then the health coverage.
“I think, of course, the war in Iran is urgent and we need to use whatever negotiation and leverage we have to stop the war,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The secondary point that I would raise in good faith is that this Medicaid cliff is hitting January 1 and work requirements, and millions of Americans stand to be kicked off on January 1, just two days before the new Democratic Congress gets sworn in. So I believe that that should also be part of this conversation.”
The work requirements, part of the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025, will go into effect on January 1 in 44 states and will affect about 30 percent of Medicaid enrollees, according to an analysis by the law firm Morgan Lewis. Under the Affordable Care Act, adults who have coverage under the Medicaid expansion must report 80 hours per month of work, schooling, volunteering, or other qualifying activities in order to keep their coverage.
“Personally, I think that we need to address, I’ve talked before about putting the oxygen mask on. I think we need to address the January 1 cliff where millions of people could be taken off health insurance,” she said.
She emphasized that the focus on health care doesn’t mean the war shouldn’t be a priority.
“That is not to diminish the importance of also an urgency also of getting out of the Iran war as well. I’m not saying, I don’t even think these are necessarily competing priorities,” she said. “There’s a lot of mess we have to clean up, and I am in favor of taking as aggressive an approach as possible.”
The interviewer asked if progressives could use the looming battle over House leadership as leverage: “On appropriations then with regards to, for instance, the leadership fight with Hakeem Jeffries, do you think there’s leverage for you and your colleagues and allies to make sure that they stop funding the Iran war in order to get your vote in support?”
Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, is expected to become speaker if his fellow Democrats elect him when the new Congress convenes in January.
Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that the funding deadline comes first. “So, I mean, the CR is coming up on what November, the CR is coming up even before the speaker vote,” she said.
When the interviewer followed up, “Right, but just with regards to other venues of leverage as possible,” Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats will have multiple opportunities to push their demands.
“Right, so there’s, so I, the great thing is that we’ve got a lot of bites of this apple,” she said. “We have the CR, which is the government funding, and what the CR is, is basically the stopgap measure from the last shutdown.”
She pointed out that the annual spending bills for each agency also provide opportunities.
“Then, separately from the CR, we have the appropriations package, which is State Department appropriations, Department of Defense appropriations. You’ve got, you know, you’ve got appropriations for every individual department, which is additional opportunities for all, for us to also talk about that,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Including the MOU in the State Department appropriations as well.”
She didn’t specify which memorandum of understanding she referred to.
“So, I think we’ve got a lot of opportunities, and I think that we will be, my expectation is that we will be taking every single one,” she said.
The clip ends as the interviewer moves on to the next question: “Do you think there will be another attempt?”
Congress passed the current stopgap with broad bipartisan support after two shutdowns in the past year that each set records for length. One lasted 43 days and ended in November 2025. A lapse in Homeland Security Department funding lasted 76 days and ended in April. Lawmakers have to pass the 12 annual spending bills for the budget year that started October 1, or another extension, by December 11 to avoid another shutdown.
The U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28. The White House requested from Congress $87.6 billion in supplemental spending on June 24, most of which is needed for the war, including $67.15 billion for the military. In July, the House Republicans approved a $95 billion budget resolution to pay for the war and other White House priorities despite the opposition of every House Democrat.
Ocasio-Cortez has been opposing the war since the beginning. In her April 16 House floor speech supporting the war powers resolution, she called it an “illegal and disastrous war in Iran.”
