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WASHINGTON — On Day 14 of the Democrat Government Shutdown, Speaker Johnson held a press conference in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol alongside House GOP Leadership and Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx to highlight the unserious, partisan demands included in the Democrats’ $1.5 trillion counterproposal to reopen the government, including $200 billion in health benefits for illegal aliens and tens of millions of dollars for “climate resilience in Honduras” and “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. $2 million for organizing for feminist democratic principles in Africa. We are not doing that,” Speaker Johnson said. “These are unserious proposals from unserious people. They are playing games while real Americans are being harmed adversely by the shutdown.”

Watch Speaker Johnson’s full remarks here.

On the unserious provisions included in the Democrat funding proposal:

They're demanding $1.5 trillion in new spending paid for by American taxpayers. And I want us to be specific. I want you to know what that counterproposal includes because we've not yet gone into all the details of it because it's large and very absurd. But here's some of the highlights of this. It would reverse commonsense reforms that Republicans made in the Working Families Tax Cut that keep illegal aliens off taxpayer-funded healthcare. This is a fact. Page 57, section 2141 of their counterproposal as we've been posting everywhere. And they would add the illegal aliens, non-citizens back to taxpayer funded benefits. It would cost taxpayers nearly $200 billion. They would also remove a very reasonable and modest work requirement that we put on able-bodied young men with no dependents. As we've said, they should not be riding the wagon and taking Medicaid that is intended for vulnerable populations – the elderly, disabled, and young pregnant women, for example, and not young able-bodied men without dependents who are playing video games. We put that into the law because it's common sense. Their counterproposal would reverse that. So, taxpayers would be funding them.

Again, they would make permanent COVID-era Obamacare subsidies without any income caps or any other reforms at all. They would make that permanent and that would cause taxpayers an estimated $358 billion. They would take away the $50 billion that we put into law to support rural hospitals. They would remove that and they would send a $500 million 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. Here's a couple of examples, this is in their legislation, their counterproposal 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. 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 $2 million for organizing for feminist democratic principles in Africa.

On Chuck Schumer’s hypocrisy:

Yesterday, we decided to do a little count of the number of times that Chuck Schumer has supported continuing resolutions just since he became the leader of the Democrats in the Senate in 2017. That number came out to 29 out of 30 continuing resolutions. That's how many times he wholeheartedly, enthusiastically supported CRs enacted into law. That's a 97% support rate.

What's changed? Well, this time his job is on the line. We've explained this very clearly because everybody can see the obvious political motivation here behind his decision to shut the government down right now. He helped us avert a shutdown in March by doing the right thing and supporting virtually identically same CR that we're offering today. And his radical base went crazy, and they haven't forgiven him for it. That's why Chuck Schumer is opposed to it today. That's what changed. It's very obvious this government shutdown is plainly and simply an exercise in image rehabilitation. This is an attempt at image rehabilitation for Chuck Schumer. So selfishly completely about himself, he is shutting the government down to hurt other people.

On Democrats begging to negotiate in private:

What Chuck Schumer means when he says that he wants us to negotiate, what he is demanding, and he said it publicly, I can't believe he says the quiet parts out loud sometimes, but he wants a backroom deal. He wants a backroom deal that the American people will never see. He literally has said, we need the top four leaders to go into a room and work this out. Why does Chuck Schumer say that? Because that's how he's operated for decades. He's been in Congress since 1980. I was nine years old in the third grade when Chuck Schumer got here. He is the broken status quo.

We are trying to break the status quo so government works better for the people. And Chuck Schumer is resistant to that because he can't even imagine the way the founders intended for this to work. He doesn't want this open to everybody involved, all Members and a bottom-up process. He wants four people to go in a backroom and just make this deal and foist it down upon everybody else. I'm not participating in that. Chuck Schumer doesn't like that. He doesn't like that we're trying to get Washington to work again, because he doesn't know how to operate in that kind of system. And we're certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain.