WASHINGTON — On Day Three of the Democrat-led government shutdown, Speaker Johnson joined The Today Show on NBC, America’s Newsroom on Fox News, and Varney & Co on Fox Business.
On Democrats lying about providing funding for health care for illegal aliens: Welcome to day three of the Democrat shutdown. Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats have now voted three times to reject the clean, simple continuing resolution that we passed out of the House two weeks ago to keep the government operating for the people, real pain for real Americans. And they’re claiming breathlessly Dana, that they’re not trying to restore free taxpayer-funded benefits and health care to illegal aliens. And it’s simply not true. I would direct everybody right now, go to Speaker.gov. That’s my official website. We put right there on the first page, the evidence, I have the receipts as Bill said earlier. Chuck Schumer filed a counter proposal, a counter continuing resolution when they voted ours down. And what is in that? If you go there on the page, you’ll see, go to page 57. It’s buried in their document, but it says in that Section 2141 right there, Chuck Schumer filed it. It says they want to repeal the health provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Working Families Tax Cut that we Republicans passed earlier this year, and that President Trump signed into law on July 4th. Now why is that so important? Because Dana, that’s where you’ll find, they want to add back in almost $200 billion of taxpayer funds to give free stuff to illegal aliens. 100% in writing — not a Republican talking point. It’s Chuck Schumer’s own document.
On Democrats handing the Trump Administration the ability to downsize the federal government: You and I, the President, all fiscal conservatives, we’re for limited government. We believe the federal government is too big, it does too many things, and it does almost nothing well. In a situation like this, Chuck Schumer is the one who has made the decision to hand that pen to the President because whomever is sitting in the White House during a shutdown is given that responsibility. It’s a heavy one. They have to determine, if the spigot is turned off and the funding stopped, they have to determine which services, personnel, and policies are essential and which are not. Our President is sitting in the White House. If Joe Biden was sitting there, he’d look at it with very different lenses. But President Trump is going to use the fiscal conservative, small government conservative perspective and philosophy when he looks to evaluate what those programs are. That’s what Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have enabled, and President Trump may have an opportunity here to eliminate some of those wasteful programs, which would be great for American taxpayers. We want the government to be smaller, more efficient and effective. And now we have an opportunity, potentially, to do that.
On negotiating the approaching expiration of Democrat health care subsidies: There are a lot of conversations about the expiring subsidies there. There are a lot of reforms that people have said would be absolutely essential for Republicans to consider in you know, voting to extend those. But here’s the very important point this morning, Stuart, those are December 31 deadline issues, not September 30. We passed the end of the fiscal year. The government shutdown is entering its third day. We’re in the third day now of the shutdown because Senate Democrats are playing politics with this. Real Americans are being harmed. You have veteran services, health services, women, infants and children nutrition programs that are stalled. We’ve got troops and TSA agents and border patrol agents serving without pay, FEMA services stopped in the middle of a hurricane season. This is not a game, and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are playing a game that they said until just now would be dangerous and destructive for the people.
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