Speaker Johnson: The Democrats Knew Pain Would Be Inflicted On The American People, And They Did Not Care
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) joined Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” to discuss the House Republican agenda going forward after the government closed for a record-long 43 days.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: The long national nightmare is finally over. We’re so grateful that Republicans stood together and faced down the Democrats. The whole thing was foolish and utterly pointless. As you know, they got nothing out of that political stunt other than imposing all that pain on the people. You had millions of American families go hungry, literally, through the 43 days of this nightmare. You had, you know, travelers stranded in airports. All those flights were canceled and delayed. People had their lives disrupted, you had troops and federal employees wondering where their next paycheck was going to come from. The Democrats knew all that pain would be exacted on the people, and they did not care. And nothing came out of it for them. It did cost real percentages on the GDP. It cost us probably trillions of dollars when it’s all said and done, literally. I mean, it’s the longest shutdown in history, as you noted. And there are real consequences for that kind of nonsense. And it’s going to take us a while to get back but we’re right back at it. I mean, the Republican Party, all of us said from the very beginning that this is an unnecessary thing. They made the whole cause up. As you know, Maria, the shutdown was never about health care. It was never about any issue. Their counterproposal for our clean continuing resolution back in mid-September was that they wanted to spend an additional $ 1.5 trillion, which included $ 200 billion to return health care to illegal aliens, among other crazy priorities. They knew we weren’t going to do that. They were trying to show, this is what it was all about, they were trying to show that they were willing to put up a fight against President Trump.
