House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) rejected threats that his next funding proposal won’t be supported by Democratic lawmakers in time to avoid a government shutdown.
Johnson was on Fox News Sunday responding to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) claim that “Republicans haven’t said a single thing to House Democrats” about the impending deadline to fund the government. While the speaker has claimed the House GOP was “united” on issuing a budget reconciliation bill as soon as late February, on Sunday he changed his estimate to March 14, which is the deadline stemming from the last continuing resolution.
“Listen, Hakeem is a good colleague but that hyperbole there is not helpful. We’re not dramatically cutting Medicaid and we’re not doing all these things they accuse the Republicans of. We are trying to get the country back on track and restore America’s greatness. It takes some real effort to do it,” Johnson said. “There will be things we’re doing in a bipartisan fashion, that the reconciliation process which we are spending all the time on right now is by design effectively a partisan exercise.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) similarly appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday implying he was willing to let the government shut down to hold Republican lawmakers “accountable.”
Johnson cast aside that threat, saying that Democrats are “flailing” in response to President Donald Trump’s continued flurry of executive orders.
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“The Democrats, frankly, are flailing right now. They don’t have an identified party leader, they don’t have a real vision for the party, and the blitz of all the Trump executive actions have them in a dizzying pace,” Johnson said. “So they are flailing right now. I get it. This is politics but we are going to get the job done.”
Johnson’s last continuing resolution was supported by all Democratic lawmakers. Still, 34 House Republicans and 11 senators voted against the legislation.
