WASHINGTON — Today, Speaker Johnson and House Republican Leadership held a press conference on Day Two of the Democrat-led government shutdown to highlight the Democrats’ lies about their own partisan counterproposal and address Democrat motivations for refusing to reopen the government.
“Real pain is being inflicted upon the American people because 44 Democrats in the Senate have voted for the third time to reject the completely non-partisan, completely clean, very simple 24-page continuing resolution that we passed in the House here two weeks ago,” Speaker Johnson said.
Watch the full press conference here.
On Democrats’ counterproposal to restore illegal aliens receiving taxpayer-funded health care:
The Democrats counterproposal CR, the dirty CR we call it as opposed to the clean CR, would result in nearly $200 billion being spent on illegal aliens and other non-citizens. Let me be specific. This is just a few of the reforms that we put in that they want to repeal and reverse. A provision that closes the California loophole. Now, that’s a provision that’s also been adopted by states like New York and Michigan and Massachusetts. Other states have followed other blue states. The California loophole allows taxpayer funded Medicaid for illegal aliens. We eliminated that in the big, beautiful bill. Their repeal, their counteroffer is to repeal and reverse that, which would cost $34 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds. A provision that prohibits Medicaid from paying more for emergency care provided to illegal aliens than it does for American patients who are disabled or elderly or children. We eliminated that, and in their counterproposal that they have filed, that you can read yourself, they want to repeal that. It would cost taxpayers $28 billion.
They have counter proposed a provision that ends the Obamacare funding for non-citizens. The cost of that repeal would be $91 billion to all of you, taxpayers. Hardworking American citizens would be funding that. A provision that repeals the Obamacare special rule for immigrants that cost would be $27 billion for taxpayers, a provision that ends Medicaid funding for those improperly granted asylum and parole under President Biden’s open borders. The cost of that would be $6 billion. I think that’s actually a low estimate…The results of all this would be $200 billion at least, and taxpayer funded benefits going straight to illegal aliens.
On Democrats’ motivations for shutting down the government:
Now, the Democrats did something they’ve never done before. Chuck Schumer has led them all to vote against it. Everybody’s been discussing this for the last few days. Why in the world would Chuck Schumer do a 180-degree turn? Because he said passionately, as recently as March of this year on the same instrument, the same CR, that it would be reckless and irresponsible and dangerous to close down the federal government. Why did Chuck Schumer change his tune? Everybody knows that now he’s trying to avoid a challenge from his left flank in his next Senate reelection campaign, and he wants to avoid the scrutiny that he received for doing the right thing back in March because the Far-Left and the base, really went crazy on poor Chuck Schumer. And so, he changed his tune, and now they’re trying to pretend it’s about something completely different.
They have made a decision that they would rather give taxpayer funded benefits to illegal aliens than to keep the doors open for the American people to keep vital services, veteran services, health care and nutrition for women, infants, and children. They, they would rather not pay the troops and TSA agents and border patrol agents, they would rather stop services of FEMA in the middle of a hurricane season than to do the right thing for partisan political purposes. It is selfish, it’s reprehensible, and it is exactly the opposite of what they have all said themselves in their own words, very passionately. Every day until now, we’ve been playing the greatest hits loop here on a video right outside the Speaker’s office for days. You’ve all seen it. Make them answer for that.
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