Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Mike Johnson (LA-04)
WASHINGTON — On Day Three of the Democrat-led government shutdown, Speaker Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune held a press conference in Statuary Hall to continue to urge Senate Democrats to do their job and vote to reopen the government.
Watch Speaker Johnson’s full remarks here.
Below are Speaker Johnson’s remarks as delivered:
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Day Three of the Democrat shutdown. You can see it’s pretty empty around here. There’s normally a lot of activity. On an average day, we have about 7,000 visitors here in the Capitol – school children and school groups and visitors and constituents, but they’re not here right now. Around the country, all around the country, right now, real pain is being endured by real people because the Democrats have decided to play politics. So, Leader Thune and I wanted to come out and do two things today, just give you a brief update on where things stand with this Democrat shutdown, and then to reiterate once more — present the simple facts about what we’re facing. This is necessary because the Democrats have a full out assault, spin the facts, and try to pretend as though they are not what they actually are.
Some of the mainstream media are participating in this as well. I was giving our leadership press conference yesterday, and in mid-sentence, I was cut off by one of the networks, CNN – CNN, I hope you’ll stay with us for a few more moments, because what I was about to say before they went to try to disclaim my remarks was, I was about to point to the very page in Chuck Schumer’s counterproposal continuing resolution that proves the very fact that we’ve been stating. So let me go through that very quickly. So everyone here has no question, and I want Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren and AOC and everybody else who’s been trying to spin this truth to watch and try to refute what I’m about to show you.
Now, here’s a visual aid. Okay? This is the bill. This is the counterproposal continuing resolution that Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats filed. Two weeks ago, mid-September, the House passed a clean, simple, continual resolution. It merely continues the Biden-era policies and spending that we’re enduring right now for seven more weeks to allow the appropriations process to continue — that’s Republicans and Democrats in both chambers working together to get the government funded. We ran out of time because the end of the fiscal year is September 30. We needed a few more weeks, so we sent it over. Ours is 24 pages in length. It says, let’s just keep the status quo. So this process, this procedure, this regular order can be done. Chuck Schumer rejected that. Senate Democrats rejected that now, three times, they voted against that measure.
And this is what they propose in advance in exchange for that. So instead, the counterproposal, this is page 57. This is on our website, go to Speaker.gov, and you can get all these visual aids for yourself. Alright, page 57, Section 2141. You see the highlighted language. There’s a lot of legalese in this legislation in these bills, but it says that they want to repeal the health subtitle changes. What does that refer to? You read down here, Public Law One 19-21. That’s the One Big Beautiful Bill, that’s the American Families Tax Cut. What they want to do is repeal the very important and necessary changes that Republicans voted to put into law. President Trump signed that into law on July 4, triumphantly on Independence Day.
It was a great marquee achievement for lots of reasons, but one of the most, some of the most important provisions in that law was that it eliminated fraud and abuse of our health system. Medicaid has been rife with fraud and abuse, and so we reformed it. Why? To help provide more and better health services for the American people. Because the problem with Medicaid is it’s been abused. We had so many people on Medicaid that never were intended to be there. Medicaid was written for the people who need it most, the elderly, the disabled, sometimes young pregnant women who are in difficult situations, but the resources were being drained. You know why? Because there were two primary categories of people that should never have been there in the first place. One was able-bodied young men who are riding the wagon, who should be working. We got them back to work. And the other thing that we focused on was the illegal aliens. By the CBO’s estimate about 1.4 million illegal aliens were receiving Medicaid benefits that were intended only for US citizens that met the categories I just described. They were gaming the system. They were cheating the system. And what that means is that less resources were available for the people, the Americans who actually needed it most. So we did the commonsense thing, the right thing, the just thing, and we put it in the law. And the President signed that gladly signed it into law. They want to repeal it. They want to give those resources back to illegal aliens. That’s exactly what that highlighted language means on this exhibit.
Number two over here, I feel like I’m back in court exhibit number two. Okay? This is the specifics of what that would mean when we say they want to give $200 billion back to illegal aliens. These are the specifics. If you read the legalese here in the language in the bill, on page 57 and what follows, that’s what it’s talking about. These are all the various provisions in the chart over here. Those are listed in millions. So you can see the final total there, $192.8 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want to give back to illegal aliens. That’s a fact. And nobody can refute it.
Now, look, what we’ve done is very simple. We sent over a clean continuing resolution. This is standard practice around here, and all the Democrats who are voting against it in the Senate right now, every single one of them have given impassioned speeches about how you must pass continuing resolutions. You must pass CR’s. You should never shut down the government because it’s dangerous and destructive and selfish and wrong. Well, suddenly they’ve changed their tune. We’re playing, I invite you all after the press conference to go by the Speaker’s Office in the hallway there, and you can see the highlight reel of all of them saying this passionately as recently as March of this last year, when Chuck Schumer led his caucus to vote for the same CR. They did it 13 times during the Biden Administration in the previous four years, but suddenly they won’t do it.
So, everybody has to ask themselves why it has nothing to do with health care. The subsidies that they’re saying is not the issue that is an issue for the end of the year. December 31 is when that expires. So, Congress has three months to negotiate that. Certainly, we could work on it in the month of October to find some consensus to figure that out. What reforms there may be necessary to make all that happen. Republicans are committed to the health care of Americans. We have already proven that we are making health care more efficient and effective and more available so that we can bring down cost and premiums and improve quality of care. We put the goods on paper, we’re doing that. And the CBO analysis that came out August 25 said that these changes that we put in our bill are doing exactly that.
Congressional Budget Office is not a Republican shop, as you all know. They typically go against what I’m doing, okay? But they had to admit that this is going to make 2.3 million ineligible recipients no longer on the Medicaid roles. It’s going to save $185 billion for taxpayers. That’s exactly what we promised. And that’s what’s going to be achieved. But we have more reforms coming to try to fix Obamacare, which is not working for the people. But you need commonsense, responsible Republicans who are serious about policy to fix that for the people. And that’s what we’re working to do. The Democrats are stalling that because they need a political talking point. And why? Because Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democrats, is terrified that he’s not going to win back his Senate seat. He’s afraid that the Marxist, far-Left corner of his base is going to challenge him in New York.
Maybe many of you have noticed New York is probably going to elect a Marxist for mayor. He’s terrified by that development. Chuck Schumer is a far-Left progressive politician, but he is not far enough left for this base. And so, he’s got to show a fight against the President. He’s got to show that he’s fighting Republicans, and because they’re playing political games and they’re not doing what he himself said passionately as recently as six months ago, that must be done, that you passed a standard bipartisan CR because he needs political cover. He’s dragging the American people through this and who’s getting hurt? Women, infants, and children nutrition programs that are now stalled. Veterans’ health services that will not be provided. People who are low-income Medicare recipients who receive telehealth and health treatment at home. Many of those programs are not being funded. We have troops and TSA agents and border patrol agents who are working without pay protecting the country. And you have FEMA services, health insurance policies, for example, that are being stalled in the middle of a hurricane season because the Democrats want to play political games and try to obscure the real facts at issue.
We challenge them to tell us why they’re not trying to give illegal aliens health care again when they put it in their own bill. This is not Republicans playing games. I could have put Republican conservative priorities on the CR and sent it over there, but I didn’t. And so, when you all asked me, why aren’t you negotiating with them, I don’t have anything to negotiate. Leader Thune and I can’t take off Republican priorities that we put in the CR and say: “Hey, is that better? Could you vote for that?” because we didn’t put them on there in the first place. Why? Because Republicans are being responsible. We’re operating in good faith, and we’re trying to get the Democrats to do their job, and they won’t. Those are the simple facts, and they cannot be obscured. I’m so grateful for the strong leadership of my colleague and partner over in the Senate.
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