Speaker Johnson on Government Funding: Democrats are Choosing Health Care for Illegal Aliens over American Troop Pay, Nutritional Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children

WASHINGTON - This morning, ahead of the September 30 government funding deadline, Speaker Johnson joined Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union and Maria Bartiromo on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures to discuss Republican efforts to prevent a government shutdown and urged Congressional Democrat leaders to drop their $1.5 Trillion in partisan demands and provide the votes to keep the government open.

"It's shameful that they're playing politics with all the services that the American people demand and deserve. They're going to be stopped," Speaker Johnson said. "Think of it, troops won't be paid because Chuck Schumer needs political cover. I mean, it's really that simple and I think everybody is going to see that clearly."

Watch Speaker Johnson on CNN here, Fox News here.

On Democrats prioritizing health care for illegal aliens over troop pay for American service members:

[President Trump] does not want the Democrats to hold up troops pay. You know the people who are serving in the military, they don't get paid during a shutdown. He doesn't want WIC funding, women, infants, and children's nutrition program being held up. He doesn't want telehealth and mental health and FEMA services to be stopped. That's what Chuck Schumer is holding hostage. Why? So that he can add $1.5 trillion in new spending at a time when we're simply just trying to keep the government going for seven weeks so we can have those debates. It's wrong. He also wants to, what Chuck Schumer is demanding in exchange for all those good things I just listed, he wants to reinstate free healthcare for illegal aliens paid by American taxpayers. We are not doing that. We can't do that.

On the meeting with President Trump and Congressional Leaders:

I had a long talk with the president yesterday Jake and he feels the same way that I do about this. He's always open to discussion, but he wants to operate in good faith, so he decided to bring us all in. He wants to talk with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and just try to convince them to follow common sense and do what's right by the American people. It's important to point out, the only thing we are trying to do is buy a little time.

The appropriators in both parties have been working very diligently over the last many weeks to work through the appropriations process. As you know, the law requires us to pass 12 separate appropriations bills and to be good stewards of American taxpayers' dollars. But that hasn't happened, it usually doesn't happen in Washington. Everything gets pushed to the end of the year right before Christmas, and there's a giant omnibus spending bill. Since I became speaker, I've been trying to force back the muscle memory, to force Congress to do its work and we're doing it.

Jake, I'm delighted to tell you, in a bipartisan fashion, the appropriators have worked through 12 separate appropriations bills in the House committee. Three are passed off the floor in the House. Three passed off the Senate floor. Those bills don't match up, so there's a conference committee between two chambers working as they're supposed to for the first time since 2019. But here's the problem. We run out of clock because September 30 is the end of the fiscal year. So, what we did was a simple, clean continuing resolution. It's 24 pages in length. All it does is keep the government open, so appropriators can continue to do this work together, bipartisan. Chuck Schumer came back with a long laundry list of partisan demands that don't fit into this process, and he's going to try to shut the government down. The president wants to talk with him about that and say, don't do that.

On Democrats attempting to make the government funding deadline a health care policy debate:

There is nothing partisan about this continuing resolution. Nothing. We didn't add a single partisan priority or policy rider at all. We're operating completely in good faith to give more time. The only thing that would 'gut health care,' using his own phraseology there, is if we took Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer's demand here because they want to cut $50 billion from rural hospitals. That's the new fund that we added in, in the big, beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cuts that we passed just a couple months ago. They want to gut that.

They also want to hold up all this funding that I listed. I mean, the WIC program is something that we all champion for women, infants, and children's nutrition. That would be held up. So, it's exactly the opposite of what Hakeem is talking about. The Obamacare subsidies is a policy debate that has to be determined by the end of the year, December 31. Not right now while we're simply trying to keep the government open so we can have all these debates.

On the Office of Management and Budget plans for a potential Democrat-led shutdown:

Russ Vought has a challenge because he's the Director of the Office Management and Budget and his job is to make very difficult decisions regarding personnel and the priorities of the government. If Chuck Schumer decides, and Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats decide to shut the government down, he's responsible for determining which services are essential, which employees are essential. And that's a big task. It's a burden that can easily be avoided if the Democrats will just apply common sense and do the right thing. But if they force that, you know, the results are going to be on them, not on Republicans. We don't want this. It's important to point out the President, Republicans in the Senate, Republicans in the House all agree that we should keep the government open and do the responsible thing. The Democrats are the one trying to force this.

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