Florida Parish News

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared on Newsmax’s The Record with Greta Van Susteren to discuss the ongoing government shutdown, which he attributes to disagreements over funding health care for undocumented immigrants. Scalise criticized Senate Democrats, urging them to take action so that Congress can continue working on appropriations.

Scalise stated, "[House Republicans' CR has] no changes, no new things, no taking out things that we don't like. It just keeps everything status quo till November 21st, so we have more time to negotiate our differences. And believe me, our differences are very wide between Republicans and Democrats. But you can see they have been hell-bent on getting funding, taxpayer funding for health care for illegal aliens. And that's why they shut the government down. Maxine Waters even confirmed that yesterday. So they have made it clear why they want to shut the government down because of things that are not in the bill that we voted on. 99% of Democrats voted to shut the government down in the House. That bill is in the Senate. They can vote today to open the government back up."

He also commented on how the shutdown affects legislative work: "Frankly, if you look at it, it's supposed to be, Greta, the 12 normal appropriations bills that fund government. The House Appropriations Committee has passed all 12 out of committee. The Senate has passed a lot of their bills out of committee as well. And so there are differences between the two. And normally, you would have a negotiation over the differences between those bills with Republicans and Democrats. That was actually happening. And there is a conference committee. A lot of people really haven't seen a conference committee, but it's going on right now on those bills. And that all stops during a government shutdown. And so if Chuck Schumer votes to reopen the government and end this tantrum that he's having, then we can get back to a negotiation on the differences on those bills and get normal government operations open again."

On fiscal policy and oversight of federal spending programs, Scalise said: "Yeah, they're going to have to drop this crazy demand that illegals should get health care for free. I mean, look, the American people don't want that. And if you look at what we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Working Families Tax Cut, we put verifications in place to save taxpayer money from waste, fraud, and abuse. And there was hundreds of billions of dollars. Everybody knew it was going on in all parts of government. One of the areas was in verifying whether somebody is here legally. They're not supposed to be getting taxpayer-funded benefits on things like Medicaid."

Addressing Democratic priorities during budget negotiations and expiring programs such as Obamacare provisions set for December expiration dates: "Greta, there are things that expire that Democrats, by the way, set to expire in December. That's not supposed to be part of the government funding debate. Government funding goes through September 30th. There are other things that expire in December that we can have separate debates on. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer are trying to bring those debates into this government shutdown debate and create another set of arguments." He added: "At the end of the day, stop holding hostages. If you want to have a debate on all of this stuff—whether it's government funding, our defense priorities, border security or health care—we can debate all of those things but not while the government's shut down; not while Chuck Schumer is holding our military pay hostage."

Steve Scalise represents Louisiana’s 1st district in Congress after succeeding Bobby Jindal in 2008 and has served continuously since then (https://www.congress.gov/member/steve-scalise/S001176). Before his tenure in Congress began in 2008 he held positions within both chambers of Louisiana's state legislature.

Born in New Orleans in 1965 and currently residing in Jefferson Parish (https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/S001176), Scalise holds a Bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University.