Speaker Johnson Joins Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday

WASHINGTON - This morning, Speaker Johnson joined Kristen Welker on Meet the Press and Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday to discuss the state of play regarding the partial government shutdown and the ongoing implementation of the Working Families Tax Cut legislation as tax season gets underway.

"I will say that we need good faith on both sides, especially in implementation. And the problem that you have in Minnesota is that you've had the governor and local leaders who have been in basically inciting violence in some cases," Speaker Johnson said on Fox News Sunday. "They're encouraging citizens to impede federal law enforcement, and that sets up a dangerous, chaotic situation. So, we need everybody to do their role and play their role and do their part, and I think we can."

Watch Speaker Johnson on Fox News here, on Meet the Press here.

On government funding:

"We'll get all this done by Tuesday; I'm convinced. We do have to do it by way of a rule process which will be probably on our own. I don't understand why anybody would have a problem with this, though. Remember, these are the bills that have already been passed, we're going to do it again… The Homeland Security bill is important, and we have important negotiations. The President is leading this; it's his play call to do it this way. He has already conceded that he wants to turn down the volume, so to speak, and make sure this is done in an appropriate way.

"What a great step it was to put Tom Homan in charge of the situation in Minneapolis. He has 40 years' experience, he's brought a steady hand to the wheel. And all that is to be applauded. And he himself has already acknowledged to Leader Schumer in the Senate, and I'm sure he'll say the same to House Democrats, that some of the reforms and the processes are fine with them. For example, we want body cameras on immigration custom enforcement agents. In fact, in the bill that the Democrats are currently rejecting, we put $20 million into that legislation to allow for that. So, look, I think there's some healthy conversations in good faith that'll be had over the next couple of days, and I look forward to that."

On the necessity of DHS continuing to detain and deport illegal aliens:

"We put all that funding in the Working Families Tax Cuts, and I'm glad that we did because we had to fix the crisis that was created by the Biden Administration over the previous four years. They opened the border wide. It was absolute chaos. We allowed, by some estimates, 20 million illegal aliens to come into the country and many of them hardened, dangerous people and criminals. We've got to get them out of the country. So, we had to front load the funding that will be there. And as you noted, it doesn't matter what they do to the current DHS bill, those operations will continue."

On the implementation of Republicans' Working Families Tax Cut bill:

"The Working Families Tax Cut bill that we passed last year will be implemented fully this quarter and next. The economic growth numbers will go up. It's written for lower- and middle-class earners and they are the ones that are going to feel the effects. No tax on tips, overtime, tax relief for seniors. The average American household's going to have $10,000 more in their pocket because of the reforms that we put in. So, all boats will rise. People will see the effects of that. This is about promises made, promises kept, and we are excited to go out on the campaign trail and tell that story."

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