House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaking to reporters on the third day of the government shutdown, expressed little hope that Democrats will agree on a vote to reopen operations soon.
“There is united support, with House Republicans, Senate Republicans, a few Senate Democrats, [President Donald Trump], for keeping or opening the government back up, and right now, it’s being blocked by the Senate Democrats,” Thune told reporters.
“There’s nothing to be gained at this point by negotiating something,” he added. “There’s nothing to negotiate. This is a straightforward, simple solution to keep the government open.”
Meanwhile, Thune and Johnson blamed Democrats for prolonging the government shutdown and said that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is blocking a clean stopgap spending bill to advance partisan priorities.
Johnson said Democrats’ proposal would undo Medicaid reforms Republicans passed in 2021 that removed ineligible recipients, including about 1.4 million illegal immigrants, from the program.
“They want to give those resources back to illegal aliens,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s exactly what that highlighted language means … it’s $192.8 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want to give back to illegal aliens. That’s a fact, and nobody can refute it.”
Johnson added that the House had already passed a 24-page continuing resolution in September to extend current spending levels for seven weeks while appropriations talks continued.
“We did the commonsense thing, the right thing, the just thing,” Johnson said. “President Donald Trump signed that into law, … Suddenly, Democrats won’t do it. So everybody has to ask themselves why.”
Johnson accused Schumer of stalling for political cover against a potential challenge from the left in New York.
“They’re playing political games,” he said. “We’re operating in good faith, and we’re trying to get the Democrats to do their job, and they won’t.”
Thune added that the shutdown had handed Trump’s administration authority to triage spending priorities, something Democrats had previously opposed. “We think the federal government is too big. It does too many things, and it does almost nothing well,” he said.
Both leaders urged Democrats to drop their objections and reopen the government.
“Please open the government, so we can do that work. … They’ve stopped our ability to do that with these political antics, and we hope it ends,” Johnson said.
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