Friday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Democratic lawmakers could shut the government down again in January.
Host Maria Bartiromo said, “I want to get your take on what happens now, Mr. Speaker, because of course, you all fund government until the end of January. And once that expires, are you expecting more drama where your colleagues on the left are going to try to shut government down again at the end of January?”
Johnson said, “Well, I don’t put anything past Schumer and Jeffries and the Democrats right now, but we’re gonna try to take that weapon out of their hand. What I mean by that is, over these next several intense days, these next couple of months, we’ll be working around the clock to make sure we get more of these appropriations bills through the process. As you know, part of the vote Wednesday night was a minibus, a small package of three of those appropriations bills that we’ve now gotten off the table. There’s 12 of them in total. So we are working right now for the next package of those to push through the process and get this done in the way it’s supposed to be done, by regular order. That is how we operate as good stewards of taxpayer funds.”
”And as you know, Maria, it hasn’t worked that way in Washington for a long, long time. Since I became speaker two years ago, I’ve been trying to force that like a boulder up a hill. And this is a big innovation. It seems like a small thing to cheer on, but in Washington, having gotten three appropriations bills signed into law, three individual appropriations bills, is a big achievement. We’re going to do more of those, and hopefully we can get all that done by that deadline in January.”
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