| April 19, 2024
For Immediate Release Contact: Taylor Haulsee
Speaker Johnson joined the Mark Levin Show to make the case for the House version of the national security supplemental legislation
WASHINGTON — Last night, Speaker Johnson joined the Mark Levin Show to make his case for the House version of the national security supplemental legislation.
Click here to listen to the full interview
On the House improvements to supplemental national security legislation:
Remember that the Senate sent to the House the supplemental foreign aid package, two months ago, right. What we’re doing right now, the House is not passing the Senate supplemental bill, we’re trying to fix that with some better policy and a better process.
We took that that bill that had lumped Israel aid, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific together, and we broke it into separate pieces so that in the House, everyone can vote up or down on their merits, each one of those items, and then we added a fourth bill to it… which is kind of a supplemental, and it has some of our policies and some of our preferences in there, where we make it tougher on Iran and Russia and China with sanctions.
And we add the REPO Act, which is a seizure and transfer of about $5 billion in Russian sovereign assets in the US to help Ukraine efforts. Some of the other innovations are things that we all believe that the loan concept, you know, that’s something that President Trump has championed. We added that into this so that the Ukrainian funding that goes to support anything related to the government is a loan instead of a gift.
And we added an amendment process so that the members of the House can vote their will, add things, and subtract things. So that’s what’s happening. It’ll be on the floor on Saturday here in the House, and everybody will get to vote their preferences on that, and I hope at the end, we can take care of our responsibilities.
On the need for standalone bills:
The whole process – the way it’s supposed to work in the House, is single subject distinct issues that we argue and debate and address on their own merits. And that’s what we’ve done here. The Senate likes to lump everything together in these giant omnibus bills. And we don’t believe in that. So, we’re getting back to that regular order, that regular process, and there’ll be lots of thoughtful discussion about it. And you know, I’ve encouraged every one of my colleagues Mark, we’re going to vote on this, get the confidential classified briefings on these things, get the real information, fully armed and equipped when you make such a consequential decision.
On the need to fund Israel’s fight against Hamas:
We have funded Israel as you know, it was within 24 hours of my becoming Speaker back in October, we funded Israel we sent it over with a pay-for. We took the 14 billion out of the IRS, slush fund and then made Israel a priority. Instead, Chuck Schumer ignored it. About a month ago Mark I tried again, I sent them a plain, clean, we call it clean, Israel funding bill, put that on the floor to vote on no pay for it. Send it over. Let’s just take care of Israel and be off the table. 166 House Democrats voted against it. You know why? Because President Biden issued a veto threat a veto threat for a clean Israel funding bill… The Senate Democrats won’t give Israel the funding Mark. The only way that I can you and I and the American people can ensure that Israel gets the help it needs in this desperate hour is to attach it in this foreign supplemental package so that Joe Biden is forced, forced to send the support to Israel.
On House Republicans 1-seat majority:
With regards to a shutdown, they stop paying our troops who are in harm’s way, and they don’t pay TSA agents and everybody across the country starts getting their flights canceled and oh, don’t worry, they won’t be paying the border patrol agents either. So that blame would be shifted to us for not paying them you know, imagine that narrative. Well, guess what? To reopen the government, remembering the numbers, remember, I can only lose one Republican. I’ll have a big group of Republicans who won’t go along with it. It won’t be pure enough for them, whatever the thing is, they won’t reopen it. Which means you’ll have to have Democrats – imagine the deal that we’d have to cut. How much of a pound of flesh to give that we would have to give to get out of that mess. That’s an impossible situation.
On Speaker Johnson’s conservative record:
My entire life, I was in the trenches for the conservative movement. I was a constitutional law attorney like you, and I used to litigate cases to defend our fundamental freedoms in the courts. I did that for 20 years before going into politics. I came into Congress as a constitutional conservative, and I’ve defended those principles that led here and it’s the reason I wound up as Speaker of the House. I mean, I helped President Trump in his impeachment defenses twice. I mean, I’ve done the heavy lifting heavy load here now. We find ourselves in this unprecedented moment in history. It’s a fateful moment in history. And I come out with our core conservative principles and I’m here to advance those as far as I can up the day up the field every single day, inch by inch.
My colleagues here, some of them here, want me to throw a Hail Mary pass on every play Mark. That’s not possible. That’s not a game plan. It’s three yards and a cloud of dust as we used to say when we play football, you got to go inch by inch up the field and get the first down to stay in the game. If we do that, we’re going to win in November. Donald Trump is going to be elected president again. We are going to win a Republican majority in the Senate, and we’re going to keep and grow the majority in the House. And when we have control, totally different ballgame. We can start throwing Hail Mary passes again, we can do those big plays and transformational change and by golly, we’re going to do it. Weve got an aggressive 100 days agenda that we’ll run and fix all this mess.
I told Donald Trump himself a couple days ago: Mr. President, I’m going to state the obvious, in your next term, you could be the most consequential president of a modern era because everything is a disaster, and you can fix it. We run a policy agenda based on our core conservative principles. We will do the greatest service to this country that the history will record, but we got to get there. So, it’s fun to be taking arrows for the reality that we have with the numbers right now? No, but I’m going to do my job and I’m going to stay dug in and I’m not changing who I am or what I believe and I’m going to try to guide this institution.
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