WASHINGTON — This week, Speaker Johnson made several stops throughout Louisiana’s Fourth Congressional District to meet with his constituents, local business leaders, law enforcement officers, and service members. At each stop, Speaker Johnson provided an update on Republicans’ efforts to prevent a costly government shutdown and took audience questions on how a Democrat-led shutdown would affect Louisiana businesses and families.
Speaker Johnson had lunch with soldiers stationed at Fort Polk on Thursday. Under a Democrat shutdown, U.S. troops would be forced to work without pay.
“We’ve got to jealously guard and protect all those who are wearing that uniform to protect us, the world is a dangerous place right now. In a typical government shutdown, our troops don’t get paid; they’re on delayed payment,” Speaker Johnson said at a press gaggle in Shreveport. “Schumer is playing partisan politics, and I think it will backfire.”
Speaker Johnson joined local radio shows Mike & McCarty and the Moon Griffon Show to discuss his district travel and Republican efforts to prevent a government shutdown, ensuring federal employees in Louisiana continue to receive their hard-earned paychecks and other critical services continue without interruption.
On Republican efforts to keep the government open and operating:
I have been working very hard to get Congress back to the way the budgeting and appropriations process is supposed to work. Under federal law, there’s supposed to be 12 separate appropriations bills done every year. Congress hasn’t done that for a long time, because they wait till the end of the year, right before Christmas, and they cram it all together in a giant omnibus spending bill. And that is not good stewardship because you don’t spend money wisely when you do that.
So, here’s where we are, good news. The House has been forced back into muscle memory, and we passed 12 separate appropriations bills through committees on a bipartisan basis. By the way, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Three of them off the House floor, three bills passed off the Senate. We’re moving it, we’re getting back to the way it’s supposed to work. The problem is, we’re running down the clock because the end of the fiscal year is September 30. So, we need a short, stopgap funding measure to give us about seven more weeks to finish the process. So that’s what we passed out of the House. No frills, no partisan stuff, no tricks. We’re just keeping the government open.
On Democrats ridiculous demands to fund the government:
The Democrats are trying to play partisan games with it. They said, we’re not going to vote to keep the government open unless you restore free healthcare to illegal aliens, unless you roll back the $50 billion you guys set aside for rural hospitals in red states, and unless you give a half a billion dollars to NPR, right? That’s their demands, among other things. They want to spend $1.5 trillion additional dollars on a seven-week, simple, clean stopgap funding measure. We’re not doing it. We’re not going to do that. So, if they shut it down, it’s going be on the Democrats. And they’ve got to make that decision by Wednesday.
On President Trump not dignifying Democrats demands:
Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democrats in the House, painted themselves into a corner. They realize how absurd the situation is. They have no way out of it. So, what they’re trying to do, is shift some of the blame onto the President. Look, they should not need a meeting with the President of the United States to do their jobs and fund the government, and the President is exactly right. He and I talked about it at length yesterday and the day before. I said, look, when they get their job done, once they do the basic governing work of keeping the government open, as President, then you can have a meeting with him. Of course, it might be productive at that point, but right now, this is just a waste of his time. The President is a little bit busy right now. He doesn’t have time to play referee for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
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