House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday shared a chart showcasing in black and white what Democrats are demanding in order to reopen the government — taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens and $1.5 trillion in new partisan spending.
“Facts are stubborn things: Here are the differences between what Republicans passed out of the House and what Democrats are demanding in order to reopen the government,” Johnson wrote on social media, sharing a side-by-side chart showing the differences between what the Republicans in the House have passed and what Democrats are now demanding.
Republicans proposed a clean 7-week extension of current Biden-era spending levels with no new programs added or partisan spending demands. The chart notes that this plan “allows time for continued work on regular bipartisan appropriations, which is already underway.”
Conversely, Democrats’ “dirty” continuing resolution (CR) puts “illegal aliens and able-bodied adults back on free, American taxpayer-funded health care” and “sends half a billion dollars to left-wing media.”
Further it “repeals $50 billion investment in rural health care” and adds up to $1.5 trillion in new partisan spending.
Johnson on Monday explained during a press conference that the shutdown fight and health care are two totally separate issues, slamming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for turning this into a partisan fight in order to appease his far-left base.
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“I want you to look at the real facts,” Johnson began, explaining that the GOP plan would “keep the lights on and keep the government open so that appropriators can finish this very healthy process for the people they represent.”
“Why do we say it’s clean? Because there’s nothing to it. It’s 24 pages. It’s the bare minimum. It just says, keep the status quo,” he said, telling the American people that the left “created a red herring” out of desperation.
“A red herring is a distraction. They decided that they would pick a fight on health care,” he said, explaining that these issues — health care and the shutdown — are actually two separate issues to address.
“They’re two totally separate things. The clean continuing resolution would simply keep the lights on so that the members in the House and Senate can have those debates on health care. We were always planning it. We have lots of ideas on the table on how to fix it, but we don’t yet have consensus on it because it’s very complicated,” he said. “We have time to do it.”
“In his [Schumer’s] desperation, they decided to create the red herring. They decided to claim that this is all about health care, which the September funding issue never was,” Johnson added.” That’s a December policy issue. He tried to create it as a September funding issue. … In his desperation, they hastily filed an outrageous counter proposal. It is a wild wish list of big government liberal nonsense that we can’t do.”
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