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WASHINGTON — This morning, Speaker Johnson joined Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria to discuss the House Republican agenda going forward after Congressional Democrats kept the government closed for a record-long 43 days.

Watch Speaker Johnson’s full interview here.

On the end of the Democrat shutdown:

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.

On the expiring, COVID-era Obamacare subsidies:

I haven't and there's a lot of reasons why. First of all, the Unaffordable Care Act has failed the American people. It did exactly the opposite of what they all promised is it would do. The Democrats broke the American health care system. The reason your premiums are skyrocketing is because they have terrible policies. And one of them is subsidizing insurance companies. That's what this COVID-era subsidy was all about. Remember, the Democrat Party created this on their own. They're the ones that put the expiration date on it December 31 of this year, because they knew it was a boondoggle. There was no way they could justify that being permanent policy. So, what we have said is, if there was going to be an extension of that, it would need massive reforms. You need some income caps on that. You should not be subsidizing health care for wealthy people. 

And you need all sorts of reforms on it. You need Hyde protections on those things and other innovations. The Republican Party has known this is going to expire at the end of the year as everyone in Congress has. We were always preparing to work through that in a deliberative fashion through October, November, December. But ironically, the Democrats, their shenanigans took a lot of the time off the clock on that for us to do it. So, we're working on it in earnest. It is the Republican Party that will bring down health care costs, not the Democrats.

On restoring regular order to the appropriations process and preventing another Democrat shutdown:

I don’t put anything past Schumer and Jeffries and the Democrats right now, but we're going to try to take that weapon out of their hand. And what I mean by that is over these next several intense days, these next couple months, we'll be working around the clock to make sure we get more of these appropriations bills through the process. As you know, part of the vote Wednesday night was a minibus, a small package of three of those appropriations bills that we've now gotten off the table. There's 12 of them in total. So, we're working right now for the next package of those to push through the process and get this done in the way it's supposed to be done, by regular order. That's how we operate as good stewards of taxpayer funds. And as you know, Maria, it hasn't worked that way in Washington for a long, long time. And since I became Speaker two years ago, I've been trying to force that like a boulder up a hill. And this is a big innovation. It seems like a small thing to cheer on, but in Washington, having gotten three appropriations bills signed into law, three individual appropriations bills is a big achievement. We're going to do more of those and hopefully we can get all that done by that deadline in January.

On Democrats standing for nothing than opposing Republicans and President Trump:

They do because we have such a remarkable track record of success. I made the point after the big vote Wednesday night, I went to the press gaggle with all the Hill press corps, and I told them, I said, we have a split screen in America. You guys are not covering this. The first 10 months of this administration and this Congress were the most productive of any in the modern era. And arguably in all of history. Look at it on the Republican side, President Trump and our party, we did the biggest tax cuts in US history. We're doing massive regulatory reform. We're cutting fraud, waste and abuse out of government. We closed the border as we promised. We're solving the crime crisis. We have all these great things going into the economy, infused pro-growth policies in our big, beautiful bill. The President has ended eight wars around the globe. 

All that in nine months, nine and a half months, what have the Democrats done at the same time Maria? They shut the government down and they pushed ICE officers around and they spurred on political violence. I mean, there is a big contrast, a wide chasm between the two parties. This is not your father's Democrat Party. They're Marxists now. They're radicals. And they are so disturbed that we are delivering for the people. They had to do anything they could to try to disrupt it. And the shutdown was their plan. It didn't work. It backfired. And I think now their leaders are going to lose their posts.

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