約翰遜議長就政府停擺發表講話

各位早上好 今天早上我們在首都 無論如何都是一場假期 這絕對是世界歷史的大日子 再次看到世界各地的螢幕 我們早上都看到了 特朗普總統在康納瓦斯總統府發表了勝利的發言 現在他正前往世界領導人在埃及的和平峯會 我想這將在下個半小時內舉行 今天特朗普總統府發表的聲明 紀唸了新中東的歷史起點 以及特朗普總統府在美國 紀唸了新時代的起點 特朗普總統府在美國 在1776年4月4日 在西方文明的最終勝利 中獲得了特朗普總統府的承諾 並且在1776年4月4日 在西方文明的最終勝利中獲得了特朗普總統府的承諾 我對特朗普總統府的承諾非常感激 我早前在這趟旅行前 與特朗普總統府的總統在埃及 我和他都非常沮喪 但民主黨人完全願意 在他們玩弄政治時做出這些損失 我們真的不敢相信 他們願意和我們一起 在他們創造的假言論中 在我們創造的假言論中 如同你們所知 在這裡的共和黨人 They claim that this didn't happen, but this is exactly what the vote tally is, and on September 19th, the House passed the Clean Resolution that got everyone paid and kept the services flowing, and they voted against it. Every Democrat but one in the House voted not to pay the troops, not to pay TSA, Border Patrol, air traffic controllers, and all the rest. The Senate Democrats then voted that down, and you see now eight times total in Congress, Republicans have voted to keep the government open, and Democrats have voted to close it. Period. End of sentence. And why did they do this? Because they want to spend $1.5 trillion in new taxpayer-funded spending as a ransom for ending the shutdown. Not our talking points. This is in the record, and they filed it. No matter how they twist it, this is a clean, non-partisan CR. It does not include new spending. It does not include partisan strings attached at all. And this is something, as we have pointed out over and over, that Democrats have supported repeatedly. In fact, 13 different times during the Biden administration. Even the liberal New York Times admits the obvious truth here. You have leaders on the Democrat side, like Jay Johnson, who spoke out this week and said, End it. End it. Open the government. And then have these negotiations. We were always planning to do that, to negotiate on the other issues. Again, we have to be very clear, the shutdown did not have to happen. But every American needs to understand why it did. And I'll reiterate, I'll summarize for you very briefly again, what happened. It happened because while Republicans are working to ensure the American people are taken care of, Democrats are playing a political game. Unlike 2013, the Democrat party is utterly rudderless. There have been times in the past where there were shutdowns. Democrats today have no leader, no vision, no direction. The party is at their lowest point in decades in terms of public opinion polls. And so they threw this Hail Mary pass. Chuck Schumer knows this. He reads the polls religiously. He knows his party is furious with him for doing the right thing back in March when he helped to pass a clean CR and avert a government shutdown. It was the right thing to do. He said so himself emphatically on the Senate floor. And that bill he supported is nearly identical to what we're offering today. The only thing that's changed is his personal political calculation. His consultants and his pollsters have told him he needs to show a fight to President Trump, even if it means hurting millions of American families. So that is exactly what Chuck Schumer is doing. He's determined that his own political survival is worth the irreversible harm he's inflicting on the American people. He's gambling with people's lives and livelihoods to appease the far left Marxist base of his party so that he can keep his job. And make no mistake, this is bigger than Chuck Schumer. Democrats are terrified of their radical Marxist base. The ones who have been here for a while. Kind of your father, your grandfather's Democrat party. The remnant of those folks who are still here in the halls. They're terrified to show any willingness to work with Republicans or to work with President Trump. Even when that would clearly benefit the American people. And everybody sees right through this. Meanwhile, Republicans are governing with common sense in just the first nine months of unified Republican leadership. We've cut taxes for hard-working American families. We ended the border crisis. We're ending the crime crisis. We're rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in government. And now, bringing an end to conflicts around the globe. And what have Democrats done? Nothing but distract. Now, I'll end on one very important note. Ending the shutdown is not a one-party exercise. Republicans do have control of Congress, quote-unquote. But it still takes 60 votes to pass a funding bill in the Senate. All of this is the way the founders intended the process to work. Any Democrats who suggest otherwise are willfully misleading the American people. Chuck Schumer gave a speech on the Senate floor. I think it was on Friday. Looked right into the cameras and said, Republicans are in control. And this is all on them. He knows full well that it takes 60 votes. And we only have 53 Republicans in the Senate. There's already a bipartisan majority in the Senate that supports our clean CR. There are three, two Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with Democrats. Three Democrats votes total who have gone along with Republicans and using common sense to keep the government open. We need five Senate Democrats now to break ranks and do the right thing. The only ransom here is the 1.5 trillion that Chuck Schumer is demanding from the American people. And you've all heard our Democrat colleagues demand that Republicans come to the table to negotiate. But as I've said time and time again, I don't have anything to negotiate with. We don't have any partisan policy riders that I can remove from the funding bill because Republicans didn't include any. It is a truly clean, non-partisan, short-term CR. They don't really want a negotiation. It's just a talking point. They're not interested in negotiation. Again, look at their counter-proposal. 1.5 trillion in new spending, 200 billion dollars to use hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund healthcare and other benefits for illegal aliens and non-citizens. And they want to give half a billion dollars to liberal news outlets to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting while cutting 50 billion from rural hospitals. These are not serious measures. They're not serious counter-proposals and they know that. They know they can't tell voters. The Senate Democrats cannot tell voters that they're willing to hold hostage funding for the nutrition of women, infants and children in exchange for restoring healthcare to illegal aliens. So they want to do this behind closed doors. And you've heard Chuck Schumer say breathlessly, I just want the four leaders to get in a back room and make a deal. We're not doing that. We're not doing that anymore. We're getting back to regular order. And it's infuriating that that's what he continues to demand. Before Democrats recklessly shut down the government, Republicans and Democrats were engaged in responsible, open, bipartisan negotiations on the appropriations process. Republicans are eager to return to the actual negotiating table to finish out full-year appropriations and do work on all the other matters before us. But we won't negotiate in smoke-filled back rooms. And we won't negotiate as hostages. Democrats in the Senate have been around a long time and they'll remember this importantly and I'll leave you with this thought. Listen closely to what I say here. Quote, There's only one way out of this reckless and damaging shutdown. Pass a budget that funds our government with no partisan strings attached. The American people don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their job. Neither does Congress. They don't get to hold our democracy or our economy hostage over a settled law. That's not how our democracy is supposed to work. That's why I won't pay a ransom in exchange for reopening the government. I'll always work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul. But not under the shadow of these threats. Unquote. What I just read was a direct quote. Those are not my words. They belong to President Barack Obama. He was speaking there in 2013 when our government was shut down for 16 days. This would be the third longest government shutdown in American history. That one would be. And my friends, if Democrats keep up their obstruction here today, this is where we're going to be headed. We're barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands and pass a clean, no-strings-attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers. I want every American to hear this clearly. What Barack Obama demanded then is exactly what Republicans are saying now. We will not allow the American people to be taken hostage over partisan demands. Democrats cheered on Barack Obama back then, and now they've flipped their entire position out of pure politics. It's now time for them to take their favorite president's advice. Do what he said was right. Pass the clean, no-strings-attached bill and reopen the government. We're on duty here, and we can return quickly to legislative session. As soon as you turn the lights back on, Chuck Schumer, and end this unnecessary hardship for the American people. Before I take your questions, I just want to give one word of thanks to the capital workers who are here today helping out even as they work without pay. There's a lot of dedicated folks who keep these engines running even when the Democrats are trying to turn them off. It means so much to us, and I want to thank you for your service to the institution, and I'll take a few questions. Yes, sir. Thank you. Speaking of President Obama, you've been very critical. Do you support repealing Obamacare? We worked on repealing and replacing Obamacare back in 2017. I still have PTSD from the experience. You remember that John McCain famously did the thumbs-down, and effectively by a one-vote margin, the whole effort was defeated. It's a great frustration of mine, and has always been of President Trump's, and we know that American health care needs dramatic reform. Let's just state it simply. Obamacare failed the American people. It was promised to be a great success to make health care more affordable. It's done exactly the opposite, and it has been pointed out by everyone that since Obamacare was created in 2010, premiums,the cost of health care, have risen exponentially. It's skyrocketed to the point where it's no longer affordable for so many Americans. And the access to care has been reduced, and the quality of care in some regions of the country has been reduced. We have to reverse all of that, and we have plans to do it. The Republican Party is the party that has the plans to fix it. Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now because the roots are so deep. It was really sinister, in my view, the way it was created. I believe Obamacare was created to implode upon itself, to collapse upon itself. I think the people who drafted that, the architects of it, knew that it would not be sustainable because their objective was ultimately a single-payer system. They wanted full government control of health care. That's a terrifying prospect for those of us who believe in low-cost, high-quality care. And so we have lots of ideas on how to fix it. But it is very, very complicated. It involves a big percentage of the U.S. economy. Health care is entwined with somewhere, I think it's 15% of the U.S. economy is the health care system. And you can't just rip it out at the roots and start over. It's a very, very complicated series of measures and steps that you have to take to fix it. Now, it takes a long time to build consensus in a legislative body to do those kinds of things. And we have lots of plans on the table. We have whole caucuses who work on this. Around the clock, all the time. When I was the chair of the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, back in the 117th Congress, we drafted a book this thick. We worked on it for almost a year. And we had a prescription for how to lower cost of care, make the quality higher and make accessibility greater. And so we have formulated all these ideas. But we've got to build a consensus to do that. And we were in the process of that. This year alone, Republicans demonstrated this. Not talking points. We did it. We put the Medicare reforms in the one big beautiful bill, many of them. And what that did, don't take our word for it, look at the analysis of the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, that came out August 25th. And they said it will have the desired effect of reducing waste and abuse in that program that was full of it. Full of waste and abuse in Medicaid, which is draining resources from people who needed it the most, which is the elderly, disabled and young pregnant women example. You all have heard me explain this over and over. But we reduced, we took all these millions of ineligible recipients off of Medicaid. That's going to be the effect of the one big beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cut. And it's going to reduce the cost. It will save $185 billion is the estimate of the CBO, just for those initial reforms. So it's a long answer to a simple question. We have to fix healthcare in America. And we have ideas to do it. But we have to have government open and operating to do that. I cannot snap my fingers and go in a back room with Chuck Schumer and say, oh,here's the magic fix for it. It's not how it's going to work. The COVID era Obamacare subsidy that they're all talking about is supposedly the issue of the day. It doesn't expire until the end of December. And by the way, it is the Democrats who created that subsidy who put the expiration date on it. They did it all on their own. Republicans weren't involved in that at all. They put an end date on it because they knew that it was supposed to be related to COVID. And it's become a boondoggle. It's a subsidy for insurance companies. When you subsidize the healthcare system and you pay insurance companies more, the prices are increasing. That's been the problem. So if indeed the subsidy is going to be continued, it needs real reform. But there's a lot of ideas on the table to do that. Probably a hundred different ideas on how to fix it. But we can't do that overnight. That requires the month of October and probably part of November to get the consensus built around that. So it is impossible. It is impossible and it is inappropriate for Democrats to demand they know what they're saying isn't true, to demand that that should be part of the negotiation today for a simple continuing resolution. And all of you know that. You're here in the building. You know how this works. You know how complicated this is. That is not a deliverable. And they know it. They chose that issue because they thought it would sell well in the public and it would show that they're fighting Trump. It's all a big facade. I'm so frustrated by it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know the President and you know the mass layoffs. So we're also learning there were significant cuts to staff and special education services. Are you comfortable with those cuts? I haven't seen the specifics of that and I don't know. I do know that each of the Cabinet Secretaries were asked to assist OMB to determine what the most essential programs are and what the priorities are for the policies and all of that. And I've been so busy on all this. I've not had a chance to dig into the details of each division and how it's happened. I know that HHS, for example, has cut some programs but they were effectively all agencies in a triage situation because remember Chuck Schumer and the Democrats turned off the funding for all these things that everybody cares about. And so the executive branch, the Office of Management and Budget has to determine what are the most efficient and effective programs. It's a difficult task. It's not one that they relish. They don't want to do it. Listen to the President's own words and Russ Vought's own words and everybody who's involved. They want the government to be opened. They're begging Chuck Schumer and the Democrats that's how to make all this stop. They want this to end immediately and they wanted it to end before it started. And so again, Republicans are voting and advocating for an open government and Democrats are doing the opposite. They are the ones keeping the government closed and bringing an end to these services and personnel and policies. That's just a simple fact. Yes, ma'am. No. I've heard a criticism from I think three members on our conference call and since our conference calls leak and they're always spun, that's the fact. You can poll individual House Republicans, maybe you should, and 98.7% of them will tell you that this is the right thing. Why? It's what you just said is the opposite of what I've said. We are working on appropriations. That work has been done in earnest. The next package of bills is being prepared. Appropriators are talking not just Republicans and Democrats but across the aisle on that. And we can move all that forward. Right now, the House Republicans, I don't know what the Democrats are doing, but the House Republicans have been very busy. They're doing some of their best work in the district helping their constituents navigate this crisis that's been created by Chuck Schumer and the Democrats. The Schumer shutdown causes real pain for real people, veterans, the elderly, people who rely upon these services. Our rural hospitals that have been struggling, our members are out helping them to access the rural hospital fund that we created and that the President signed into law on July 4th that no Democrats assisted on. Chuck Schumer wants to take those funds away. They're trying to make sure that the rural hospitals can access them because they know that this effort is underway. And so our members are doing very productive work. We're in constant communication with them. And we are ready to come back and continue the work in our committees and everything on the House floor. We will return to legislative session as soon as the Democrats come to their senses and open the government. That is a necessity so that the work can continue and the people, the members of Congress can do their jobs. And that's what we will do. That's our commitment. It always has been. This has to stop. We're on day 13. This should end tomorrow. The Democrats in the Senate's next opportunity to end this, to change this and vote yes and reopen the government will be tomorrow. And I pray that they will do the right thing. And then we'll all get together and have our partisan disputes and discussions on all the issues that remain on the table for the end of the year. We're doing our work behind the scenes. We're preparing for that moment. And we can't wait for it to happen. So the question is for the Democrats. When will Congress get going again? And I hope they answer it affirmatively. Thanks so much.