Pelosi dings Republicans over possible government shutdown: ‘The former president was famous for not paying his bills’

• Pelosi criticized Republicans on Thursday for voting against a bill to avert a government shutdown.
• "The former president was famous for not paying his bills," she said. "And they want to do that."
• Trump has a reputation of not paying bills, both in his personal life and during his campaigns.

At her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knocked former President Donald Trump as she criticized Republicans for failing to support a measure to avert a government shutdown.

"You know, the former president was famous for not paying his bills," Pelosi said. "And they want to do that again, but we cannot let them do that and jeopardize our economy."

She added: "Why should it be that we as Democrats always come to the rescue when it's a Republican president? And we're not coming to the rescue of the president, we're coming to the rescue of our economy."

The House passed a bill on Tuesday to keep the government open and suspend the country's debt limit until December, which also included nearly $35 billion in disaster aid to and relocation funds for Afghan refugees who assisted US forces during the recently concluded war in Afghanistan. That bill passed on a party-line vote but is likely to be blocked in the Senate.

Pelosi was likening Republican attitudes to funding the government to a well-publicized record of the former president and onetime real-estate developer failing to pay what some contractors and vendors said he owed for their services.

And that behavior often carried over to Trump's campaign, including millions of dollars in unpaid bills from local police departments in connection with political rallies. In April, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller sent a $211,000 bill to Mar-a-Lago after a 2019 Trump campaign event forced the city to shut down the downtown area and close city hall, which resulted in "tremendous" costs to the city, Keller said.