WASHINGTON — Tonight, Speaker Johnson joined Hannity on Fox News to discuss the Congressional Leadership meeting at the White House today, and Democrats’ refusal to drop their $1.5 Trillion in partisan spending demands in exchange for carrying out their basic responsibility of keeping the government open.
“Chuck Schumer is now arguing exactly the opposite of what he has always said in his career… and he’s doing it out of political desperation,” Speaker Johnson said. “He is willing to force the government to shut down just to oppose President Trump for temporary political cover for himself, and he will abandon the American people just to do that.”
Watch Speaker Johnson’s full interview here.
On the harmful effects of a government shutdown:
Remember this, Sean. We passed the clean, simple CR out of the House two weeks ago. Every single Democrat in the House except one voted to shut the government down. I mean, they’re willing to do it. They’re willing to exact all this pain. And by the way, while you mentioned some of the things that will continue, defense and all that, troops don’t get paid during the shutdown. And very importantly, health care.
They want to talk about healthcare. If they don’t fund the government, guess what does stop? The WIC program, that’s Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program, won’t be funded. We won’t have FEMA funded, and we’ve got hurricane season. We’ve got two off the coast of the United States right now. FEMA service is not funded. Telemedicine, mental health services, all these things that the American people need, and they won’t be able to access if the Democrats go through with this. So, I certainly pray they don’t. They have another chance because Leader Thune is going to put the House bill on the Senate floor again tomorrow and probably again on Wednesday. And we’ll see if Chuck Schumer goes along with this.
On Democrats shutting down the government just to satisfy their far-left base:
I fully expected that they would come into the White House today and be reasonable, but they weren’t. They dug their heels in. It’s painfully obvious that he’s got to watch his back because the young socialists are coming for him, AOC and the others who want to challenge him for his seat. And that is 100% what Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries by extension, are watching for. Their own political cover. And they will exact all this damage – that we just heard them say in their own words in previous years – they’re willing to do it just so they get political cover. They haven’t backed off on any of those demands, Sean, you had it right.
They want to take hard earned taxpayer dollars, and they want to give new benefits to illegal aliens. We eliminated that in our big, beautiful bill. They want to bring it back. They want to prop up NPR and PBS, they want $500 million. That’s their demand and their counteroffer to prop up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Again, we’re not doing that. Left-leaning media outlets don’t need to be funded by taxpayers. They want to spend one $1.5 trillion on a simple seven-week stopgap funding measure so our appropriators can get back to the job of just funding the government.
On the Congressional Leadership meeting today at the White House:
Their hypocrisy is just breathtaking and it’s shameless. And it was on display in the Oval Office and credit President Trump showing real leadership. He’s operating in good faith. And that was on display by bringing the leaders in. He heard the arguments and the debates. They’re baseless.
[President Trump] wanted to give them a forum in the Oval Office to come in and try to be reasonable. And they weren’t, they wouldn’t back off on any of these crazy demands. So let me tell you something, there is zero daylight between the White House, the President of the United States and Republicans in the Senate and in the House. We are all united on this. We are going to do the right thing.
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