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Speaker Mike Johnson revealed that House Republicans can be back in session in 48 hours if Democrats will stop playing games, pass the clean GOP House-passed short-term funding bill, and then work together on the larger bill before the year is over.
During an interview on Fox Business, Johnson spoke about Senate Democrats voting on Monday to block a Republican-sponsored stopgap funding package for the 11th time as the shutdown enters its fourth week.
Senators approved the House-passed bill by a vote of 50-43, which allocates funding for the government until November 21. Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Independent Senator Angus King of Maine were the sole senators who deviated from party lines to support the bill’s advancement. Senator John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) abstained from voting.
“Yeah, thank you so much for being here. We are in the fourth week of this shutdown and we’ve got unpaid federal workers, families that rely on food programs. What do you say to those people, those Americans, why is the government still closed?” host Cheryl Casone asked.
“Yeah. Those categories that are listed by Leader Thune and yourself and so many others, real Americans are hurting and it is so frustrating to us, Cheryl, because the contrast so is clear. Remember, it was over a month ago that the House did our job, we passed a clean continuing resolution, totally nonpartisan, 24-page, very simple piece of legislation to just keep the lights on so the Congress could continue to do the work of appropriating the funds for the annual budget, and also for navigating all the rest of the issues we have on the table throughout the end of the year,” Johnson said.
“The Democrats voted it down, they’ve done it now almost a dozen times, as you said, because they’re playing partisan games. They filed a counterproposal. Let’s not let anybody forget what they filed as their counter-offer. Their CR is not a clean one, it’s a dirty one, because they want to spend a trillion and a half new dollars on all sorts of wasteful programs, including 200 billion dollars to fund healthcare benefits on the backs of American taxpayers for illegal aliens,” Johnson added.
“They want to give a half a billion dollars back to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to prop up leftist news organizations, and they want to spend billions of dollars overseas on all sorts of extraneous, crazy kinds of programs. They know we’re not going that,” he continued.
Johnson declared, “It is not a serious proposal. This is the first time in history that any party has chosen to shut the government down over a clean CR. They are playing a game, and it’s very simple — here’s the reason why. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the two leaders in both chambers for the Democratic side, are afraid of their far-left flank, they’re afraid they’re going to get a challenge in New York because Marxism is all the rage, and they’re going to lose their seats, so they’re putting up a fight. It makes no sens,e and real people are getting hurt.”
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“Well, here’s the thing. You know, the mainstream media has asked me in all these interviews, ‘Why aren’t you negotiating?’ Cheryl, I literally don’t have anything to negotiate. In the past, when there has been a CR standoff like this, a continuing resolution to keep the government open, the majority party has loaded up the CR proposal with a lot of partisan priorities, you know, gimmicks and tricks sometimes,” Johnson said.
“We haven’t done any of that. I mean, we are operating in good faith. The Republicans are trying to keep the government moving forward, so we sent over a totally clean CR. So, in other words, there’s nothing I can pull off of that to make it more palatable for Democrats. It’s exactly what they already voted for,” he said.
“Chuck Schumer voted for the identical measure in March of this year, he gave an impassioned speech on the floor about how it had to be done because it’d be totally irresponsible to harm the American people by shutting the government down,” he added.
Johnson cloncluded, “The only thing that’s changed between March, seven months ago, and now is that Chuck Schumer is now afraid of the rise of Marxism in New York, that’s his home state, and he’s afraid he’s going to lose the seat that he’s held for so many years.”
