Speaking during an appearance on Fox News Channel to discuss the matter of the Schumer Shutdown and what it is that Democrats are attempting to achieve with it, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) of wanting to fund healthcare for illegal aliens at the expense of rural hospitals.
That came on Sunday, October 12, when Rep. Scalise appeared on “Sunday Night in America” with host Trey Gowdy to discuss what is actually going on with the shutdown, particularly from the angle of what obscene spending the Democrats want that Republicans are refusing to accept, such as healthcare funding for illegal aliens.
Kicking off that portion of the interview, Gowdy asked what is actually happening in Congress and why no deal has been struck, saying, “There is so much misinformation out there. Help our viewers understand what Democrats, who, by the way, are in the minority, are insisting on to open government.”
Scalise then responded by explaining that Schumer is, most of all, trying to not get outflanked to the left by AOC so that he can hold onto his Senate seat despite a potential challenge from her. He said, “Well, Trey, it’s great to be with you. And you know you laid out what Chuck Schumer’s fear is. It’s the far left, it’s the AOC wing of the party and in fact, our polls show AOC would beat Chuck Schumer in a primary and that seems to be all he cares about, his political future.”
Continuing, Scalise explained that Schumer is shutting the government down and putting military servicemember pay at risk for that political reason, saying, “He surely doesn’t care about the lives of American families, our soldiers, our men and women in uniform who will not get paychecks next week because of this crazy move to shut down the government by Schumer.”
Adding to that, he went on to explain that while just a few Democrats are needed to get a clean spending bill passed, that hasn’t happened because Democrats won’t buck Schumer’s orders and sign onto sanity. He said, “And so it’s real straightforward. I mean, we passed a bill out of the House, as the Speaker just said in that clip you ran, and it’s over in the Senate, and all you need is five more Democrats to join in.”
Further building on that point, Scalise noted, “As everybody knows, we could pass anything we want with the Majority in the House, and while Hakeem Jeffries tried to whip all of his members to shut the government down, we still passed that bill with Republican votes. But in the Senate, they need 60 votes, which means even with every Republican, they need some Democrats, and that’s where Chuck Schumer has been shutting down the government.”
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Then, getting to the point about illegal alien healthcare and rural hospitals, Scalise said, “And for what you ask, it’s really a wish list of things that he filed as an alternative to open the government back up again and Trey, it includes a trillion and a half dollars in new, unrelated spending. And by the way, he’s gutting rural hospital funding while they talk about health care. They gut rural hospital funding to give taxpayer funding, for example, to illegals.”
Concluding, Scalise noted that political priorities are coming first for Democrats, not helping out Americans, saying, “That’s part of what is in Chuck Schumer’s bill. So it shows you what their priority is. They don’t care if our troops don’t get their paychecks, but they surely want taxpayer funding for illegals. It’s in Chuck Schumer’s bill.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: By I, DavidShankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2301835