Press Releases

WASHINGTON — This morning, Speaker Johnson joined Joe Kernen and Becky Quick on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss House Republicans’ efforts to responsibly keep the government open and Congressional Democrats’ ongoing attempts to inject unrelated partisan politics into the clean, short-term continuing resolution.

“If the government is shut down because they make that their last stand, it will solely be blamed on Democrats,” Speaker Johnson said. “Because we're not playing politics with this at all. We're just trying to keep the lights on.”

Watch Speaker Johnson’s full interview here.

On Republican efforts to keep the government open:

We have been trying to force the government appropriations process back to what we call regular order, you know, the way it's supposed to work. The 1974 Budget Control Act puts very specific dates and requirements on how this is supposed to be done so that Congress can be careful stewards of the precious treasure of the US taxpayers. We do 12 separate appropriations bills. But the problem is, as, as we've discussed on your program, that hasn't been done that way in quite some time. We're sort trying to force that back into the system. And I'm delighted to report to you this morning that the House has done its job. The House Appropriations Committee actually has passed all 12 separate appropriations bills through the committee, three off the house floor, the Senate did three.

So, you know what we've done? We're now forcing the mechanism of a conference committee. That's the way this is supposed to work. When you have the House and the Senate with the same bills that don't match exactly, you get a subset of people in those areas of jurisdiction who go into a room and work it out, that's how the system is supposed to work. So, we're going to do that again. We're moving forward productively, but the concern is that we've run out of clock to finish that process. We need a short term, very clean continuing resolution, to keep the government open so our appropriators can continue to do their work. Chuck Schumer and Jefferies and the others are opposing; that they're trying to insert partisan political preferences in the middle of a clean funding extension. It doesn't make any sense, and they're going to lose that battle.

On Democrats’ attempts to politicize the short-term, clean CR:

What they're trying to argue for, not to get too deep in the weeds, is they're trying to insist that the Obamacare premium subsidies be continued. That's a December policy debate and decision, not a September funding matter. They're trying to insert unrelated matters into the middle of a clean government extension. And I don't think that's going to work. If the government is shut down because they make that their last stand, it will solely be blamed on Democrats, because we're not playing politics with this at all. We're just trying to keep the lights on. And they're trying to insert this as a sort of last-ditch effort to regain their footing because the party is reeling right now. They have no identified leader, platform, policy they advance. Everything is about hating Trump and hating Republicans. That's not really something to run on.