Johnson joins Fox and Friends to outline the short-term continuing resolution
This morning, Speaker Johnson joined Fox and Friends to discuss the short-term continuing resolution which avoids a costly government shutdown and a Christmas omnibus and ensures President Trump and Congressional Republicans will have full control of the reins of government in early 2025.
“Here’s the key: by doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda. That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3 when we start the new Congress when Republicans again are in control,” Speaker Johnson said. “Right now, Democrats still control and that’s the problem. So, we have to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown, so we get the short-term funding measure, and we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start. And we can’t wait to get there.”
On the need for a short-term CR:
When we start the new Congress in January, when Republicans are in control and DOGE is on working on all six cylinders, we’re going to be able to scale back the size and scope of government. But before we get to that point, remember, right now we only control one half of one third of the federal government. Remember, Democrats are still in charge of the Senate and the White House. What we’ve done is the conservative play call here.
My friends that you just interviewed there, or those clips you played, were part of this decision. We decided, even though we don’t normally like short term stop gap funding measures, it made sense here instead of doing Chuck Schumer and Biden spending for 2025. We pushed this decision into March; it’ll be though March 14. So, the feature there is that we’ll have Republican controlled Congress and Trump back in the White House and we get to decide spending for 2025. That is a good thing,
On disaster relief and providing aid to America’s farmers:
Here’s what this bill entails. It’s a short-term funding extension until March 14, and that would have been an easy thing, relatively, to pass. But here’s what happened: we also had to add, due to circumstances outside of any of our control, emergency funding. We had two major emergencies. We had a record, historic hurricane season that we all know — Helene and Milton and the rest — that destroyed a big swath of the country. We have to have funding for that. That’s $100 billion to rebuild six states.
And then on top of that, we have our farmers. Our small farmers and ranchers, our food producers in this country, are in jeopardy of going under permanently. They’ve had three lost years in a row, primarily because of Bidenomics and inflation and lots of other factors outside their control. So, for the first time since I’ve been in Congress in eight years, it’s not just farmers and ranchers urgently needing help, we now have the creditors, lenders, the banks who give them those loans, who are saying ‘we have to have a stopgap measure.’
So, when you add those things in, here’s the other thing to remember, our Democrat colleagues who have to vote on all this, they don’t prioritize agriculture. They don’t really care that much about farmers and ranchers, because they’re in rural red districts, right? But that’s our food supply. If we crush domestic food supply, that is direct threat to national security; we need all those small farmers and ranchers and that’s included by the bill as well. When you add all those things together, that’s what makes people nervous.
On DOGE:
I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon and Vivek and I are on a text chain together, and I was explaining to them the background of this, and Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight, and he said, ‘look, I get it. We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’
Remember guys, we still have just a razor thin margin of Republicans. So, any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said, it’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending. I said, guess what, fellas, I don’t either. We got to get this done because here’s the key: by doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with America first agenda. That’s what we’re going to run with gusto, beginning January 3, when we start new Congress when Republicans again are in control.
And all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we’ve been wanting to do for the last couple years. Right now, Democrats still control and that’s the problem. So, we have to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown, so we get the short-term funding measure, and we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start. And we can’t wait to get there.