C-SPAN Caller Rips Into Mike Johnson For Claiming People Are ‘Smiling’ About Troops In Their Cities
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) joined C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Thursday morning and took questions from callers, some of whom raked him over the coals for the ongoing government shutdown.
“Hi, I just want to start by saying hearing you say that everyone is smiling in the cities where troops—our National Guard—has been rolled into feels dystopian and insane to hear you say this, watching the response to this. But that’s not actually my question. My question is—I needed to say that while hearing you talk about this,” said a male caller from Colorado, who added:
My question is: if Republicans and Democrats can agree to a one-year extension to remove this sort of talking point of illegal immigrants draining our resources as you sit here and lie about this, would you support that bill and bring it to a vote on the House floor? This is a big question that I have for you. Thank you.
“Yeah, well, not lying. I’m telling you the truth, and you can go look at all the documents yourself. Don’t look at Republican paperwork. Look at the Congressional Budget Office, who said that we had at least 1.4 million illegal aliens draining the resources from Medicaid, which is why you put their forms into law and got it signed July 4th. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries’ counter-proposal for the CR would reverse all that. Look at page 57, section 2141 of the bill that they filed. I made it easy for you. Go to speaker.gov—my website—it’s right there on the home page. See for yourself. Don’t take my word for it,” Johnson replied, adding:
Look what they wanted to do. But with regard to whether or not the subsidies could be extended for a year, Hakeem Jeffries came out yesterday and said that is a non-starter. You have to ask him why he said that. I’m not sure, but he and I both know that we have a lot of work to do within our respective caucuses to build consensus around that.
Many, many people here believe you have to make serious changes and reforms to make it work better. Those subsidies are propping up insurance companies, and it is driving premiums up higher. It is not solving the problem. You think about this: when the government subsidizes something, it means it’s not working. The EV mandates—the electric vehicle mandates—the reason the government said, “We’ll pay you $7,500 if you buy an electric vehicle” is because nobody was buying electric vehicles. And even when they did the subsidy, it didn’t work. So we reversed that. The subsidy means that Obamacare is not working, so we need to fix the root of the problem and not continue to add the taxpayers’ funds on top of that. That’s a real concern.
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.
