Speaking during a press conference on Monday, October 13, the thirteenth day of the government shutdown sparked by Democrats refusing to go along with a continuing resolution and fund the government to keep it open, Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson. (R-LA) brought out an old Obama quote to skewer Democrats for their intransigence.
As background, the shutdown began on October 1, after the Senate couldn’t come to an agreement on the matter of spending on September 30. Thus, the shutdown is now on track to become one of America’s longest such incidents. Currently, the longest shutdown is a 35-day shutdown that occurred in the first Trump Administration, lasting between December 2018 and January 2019. The second longest occurred for 21 days, during the same yearly period but during the Bill Clinton Administration.
Commenting on that aspect of the matter during his October 13 press conference, the Speaker of the House explained, “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.”
He also brought the receipts to skewer Democrats, trotting out an old quote that President Barack Hussein Obama told a crowd over a decade ago. He said, quoting the former president, “There is one way out of this reckless and damaging Republican shutdown: Congress has to pass a budget that funds our government with no partisan strings attached.”
Continuing, he noted that the quote he had just let loose with was something Obama had said after 16 days of shutdown, a landmark that is fast approaching as most Senate Democrats remain intransigent. He said, “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.”
Still not done, he noted that the shutdown is approaching that shutdown’s length, which was the third longest in American history, and this one is being pushed along by irresponsible Democrats. He said, “This would be the third-longest government shutdown in American history, that one would be.”
Concluding on that point, he noted that America is going to hit such a milestone thanks to the Democrats and their strategy of obstructing the reopening of the government despite the very fair bill Republicans have proposed for doing so, saying, “If Democrats keep up their obstruction here today, that’s where we’re going to be headed.”
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Watch him here:
Trump, for his part, has moved to pay America’s troops despite the shutdown. In his post about the matter on Truth Social, he said, “Chuck Schumer recently said, ‘Every day gets better’ during their Radical Left Shutdown. I DISAGREE! If nothing is done, because of ‘Leader’ Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th. That is why I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”
He added, “We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS. I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown. The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video