Senate Republicans are mocking Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) for lying about the shutdown, which Democrats continued for well over a month, leading to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
“Families are going hungry, federal workers are missing paychecks, & Americans are being stranded in airports. This chaos is Republicans’ making,” Hirono bizarrely declared on Wednesday.
“They insisted on spiking health care costs instead of prioritizing affordability & now Americans are paying the price. Literally,” she added, making no mention of the absurd partisan demands her party leaders threw out, including $1.5 trillion in spending.
“Senator Hirono voted 15 times against reopening the government, which includes SNAP funding and pay for air traffic controllers,” the Senate Republicans’ official X account responded, laying out the facts.
“She spent the last six weeks forcing the pain of a shutdown onto the American people, all to protest the failure of Democrat policies she voted for — inexcusable,” Senate Republicans added.
Indeed, Democrats voted against reopening the government over a dozen times, yet they continued to place the blame on Republicans, who offered a clean continuing resolution (CR) as opposed to a hodgepodge of partisan demands. As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) explained throughout the shutdown, Democrat demands to reopen the government included $3.9 million for LGBTQI+ democracy grants in the Western Balkans.
“They would send a half a billion dollars to liberal news outlets by refunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It would also restore up to $5 billion of American taxpayer funds for wasteful spending for international projects,” he said.
“Here’s a couple of examples. This is in their legislation, their counter proposal on the CR to keep the lights open, this is what they want to do. They want to spend 24.6 million of your hard-earned dollars as a taxpayer for climate resilience in Honduras,” Johnson continued.
“They want to spend 13.4 million for civic engagement in Zimbabwe. They want to send 3.9 million for LGBTQI+ democracy grants [in] the Western Balkans. They want to spend 2.9 million of your dollars for desert locust risk reduction in the Horn of Africa and two million for, quote, ‘organizing for feminist democratic principles in Africa,’” he added.
On Monday night, Senate Democrats finally passed a CR to reopen the government.
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